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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   2484 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 16, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Since this is videogames week in this thread:

Has any game’s story (ie not player-generated interaction or content) ever emotionally affected you in a major way?

I found Spec Ops: The Line more engaging on an intellectual level than emotional, but it did still affect me emotionally. Better to go in blind (if that's possible for a game that came out over a decade ago). You can probably finish the whole thing in six hours so it's not a huge time investment.

I'm a simple man and if a story wants to manipulate me, it will. Gone Home and Firewatch both affected me in a lasting way.

Disco Elysium did affect me as well, but it's a different thing: the aforementioned walking simulators want to change the way you look at people in the real world. DE gives you an absolute trainwreck of a character and lets you learn to love him by slowly discovering his past and possibly putting him on a path of redemption. Since he's the protagonist, it doesn't transfer to the way you relate to people that are similar washed-up losers around you in real life. I also don't have any spoilers that spoiled my spoiler.

I am also a scaredy cat, and Thief: Deadly Shadows pulled a switcheroo on me, by first teaching me to love the darkness and then making me play one of the scariest levels in video games history.

I'll skip the games that I played as a teen, since that's a whole different level of hormones and angst.

I’ll second…well, several of these. Everything Fruck said about Mother 3 held true when I played it. It’s brilliantly composed and written. I’ll add Cave Story for similar if less dramatic feelings.

Disco Elysium made me laugh so much, but it also made me feel this sense of…it’s hard to describe. Investment in this train-wreck character and his personal journey. A sort of aching empathy I associate with certain books. It’s vivid.

There are, of course, games that evoke through atmosphere rather than story. Breath of the Wild conveys this peaceful emptiness, even though its story is bland at best. My favorite for this effect might be Starsector. Its story is well-drawn but not what I’d call emotional. But when you’re out in the void, scrounging dead colonies for lost tech, the environment just draws you into the premise. It’s somewhere between tense and chilling, and I think that counts.

There are, of course, games that evoke through atmosphere rather than story. Breath of the Wild conveys this peaceful emptiness, even though its story is bland at best. My favorite for this effect might be Starsector. Its story is well-drawn but not what I’d call emotional. But when you’re out in the void, scrounging dead colonies for lost tech, the environment just draws you into the premise. It’s somewhere between tense and chilling, and I think that counts.

Weird. Starsector always felt especially hands-off and unemotional to me, like a game that specifically does not want you to get invested. Not sure why though.

Great question, there are to my memory 4 games that have had a large emotional impact on me. Mother 3, the gameboy advance follow up to Earthbound, did so several times as I mentioned in an earlier thread. What's most impressive about Mother 3's manipulation though, is that it manages to do so despite telegraphing the shit out of every major plot point. Nothing catches you off guard in the main plot for Mother 3, especially if you have played Earthbound (although there are some good twists inside most of the chapters). It barely disguises the masked man, but his unmasking destroyed me anyway. Same with pulling the final needle (until Nintendo wimped out). It's hard to talk about without spoiling it, and I don't want to do that because more people should play it.

Anyway I blame the music, which is brilliantly composed for emotional resonance. Good music is kind of like a cheat code for emotional impact, it sucks you into the narrative and adds substance to it, subtly maneuvering your brain into emotionally established patterns. Which brings me to two other games that have brought tears to my eyes - Journey and Nier. Journey is a pretty simple game that was designed from the ground up to manipulate people's emotions, which is a bit cheap in my eyes, but it did a good job of it, which made it handy in the "vidya isn't art like films" arguments that were popular at the time.

Nier probably doesn't need the proselytising I used to do for it these days, what with the remaster, but if you like emotional experiences in video games and haven't played it, you really should. All three of the main characters are designed to be off-putting, but each of their tragedies pulls at your heartstrings regardless. But if Nier's characters and story are a one-two punch Keiichi Okabe's gorgeous soundtrack is the follow up uppercut that puts you on the floor. Kaine's story is a great example - her theme is the beautiful Kaine/Salvation a soft and ethereal piece with lyrics that seem to be a melange of Gaelic, Greek, and Japanese. It plays when you first meet her and then again, sometimes slightly altered, when she takes the story lead at other times. So when her story comes to a climax in one of the endings, and the triumphant Kaine/Escape starts playing, it was a a real challenge to maintain my composure.

I am still not happy about the last of the four, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. The baby scene is too cheap, it's such a jagged tonal shift from the slow drip-fed mystery you were just walking through that it still ticks me off. Which is not to say the sequence itself is badly done - it isn't at all, it just didn't belong tvoec imo.

Disco Elysium got me real good, many times. It's a beautiful story, and the writing is, as others have mentioned, stellar.

Outer Wilds was another one. The sense of exploration, the beauty of the world they've built, the terror of certain environments. I can't recommend that game enough.

The original Halo, playing it in like 2002. The story was super compelling and thrilling. The beginning of Kingdom Hearts, the island where the protagonist lives, was a great part of the story

Several. Note, I watch games more than I play them, in part because games are often not compatible with Mac especially early on in its release and my computer also often lacks the appropriate specs to properly run them. This means I tend to gravitate towards story-heavy games, where the enjoyment is mainly on the narrative and less on the gameplay. You can find a synopsis of any of these games online, so rather in this post I will try to sell these games to people who haven't played them before.

The main one that comes to my mind is SOMA, which is perhaps the piece of media that did the most to get me interested in sci-fi. In this game, the protagonist is a man who has brain damage and goes in for a new experimental brain scan to explore treatment options. During the scan, he blacks out and wakes up in a mysterious facility. This is a relentlessly bleak and nihilistic game that tackles topics like consciousness, brain emulation, artificial intelligence, morality and so on and while there's probably not much new there for the seasoned Mottizen who I assume is intimately familiar with all of these topics, it places its philosophical musings in the context of a very affecting story that stayed with me long after the credits rolled. The part where you have to extract the security cipher from Brandon Wan, as well as the ending, are some of the scenes that I still think about from that game today. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that this game is probably one of my all-time favourite pieces of narrative media in general, and I always strongly recommend it to people who haven't played it or experienced it in some way.

There's also OMORI. This game is very unlike the previous in that it doesn't grapple with Big Themes or Big Ideas and rather tackles a more personal story. Now, it is an RPG Maker game, which are typically horribly written and put together, but this one is quite well done. You play as a hikikomori who routinely loses himself in a dream world he's made to cope with reality called Headspace, and watch as his mental state slowly unravels. This game is willing to go to incredibly dark places, and the last third of the game in particular is especially fantastic (albeit very emotionally draining). I do have my gripes with it - the game has a huge amount of unnecessary padding, for one, but the story more than compensates for it. And there's a late-game plot development which might be seen as cheap, but which I personally think works very well and which the game wouldn't be the same without.

Seconded SOMA, the ending really got under my skin.

Mount & Blade Bannerlord had me spend a day mulling over whether to support a failing roman empire that eliminated smaller cultures or a short-lived barbarian kingdom. But I guess that's more cerebral than emotional.

I'd again give it to Cyberpunk 2077. I've certainly done a lot more thinking about that one than about any other game's story that I can remember offhand. Especially wondering about how my perception of the deuterogonist changed over time, and how all the prospective endings made sense. I was genuinely sad that the game ended and I wouldn't get to explore it any further, and that I had seen the last of those characters.

I remember a review which said there are more hours of gameplay after the “end” of the game than before it. Were they playing it wrong?

Oh no, that's possible. It depends entirely on how much sidequesting content you leave over before you finish the main quest. The overall amount of content is the same regardless of how early you finish the plot.

I for one finished the main quest as the very last, after having meticulously cleaned out the entire map. And then my precarious structure of QoL and difficulty mods broke and I couldn't start the post-game anymore even if there was anything left to do.

Bannerlord is essentially player generated though, it merely provides the scaffolding for player decisions

In general, yeah, and especially so if you play the Sandbox mode. But I did play the main quest once, and it does force you to make that decision.

TIL about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpel-Fonetik_method_of_writing

It's hilariously obvious in hindsight that the creator was Estonian, because it looks like "Finland Män":

It was on the först dei of the nuu jiir thät the ännaunsment was meid, olmoust saimulteiniosli from thrii obsöörvatoris, thät the moushon of the plänet Neptune, thi autermoust of ool the plänets thät wiil öbaut the san, häd bikam veri erräätik. Ö retardeishon in its velossiti häd biin saspekted in Disember.

Reading this aloud sounds like very heavily Swedish accented English.

No. I watched about five minutes of their recent 45 minute gameplay and developer-interview video, and they struck me as fairly unmotivated and uncreative people just going through the motions, making a very standard product that had to check a bunch of boxes. It may well be a big game, but I doubt that it will actually be very memorable.

I'm not sure Bethesda have really made a great game for many, many years and I don't expect that to change with Starfield. Like everyone else here, I think they'll probably make something very engaging but which will feel hollow in the long term

Skyrim had an incredible landscape, the first time you had to walk from point A to point B it surprised you at every turn of the road. Fallout 4 was less breathtaking, but still one of the best open worlds.

The main quest in Fallout 4 was better than in Skyrim, even though both were meh.

I totally expect Starfield to iterate on what Skyrim and F4 did well, padded with a whole bunch of radiant quests:

  • lots and lots of open world environments full of enemies and pretty vistas: they have a good pipeline for that, so I believe they can actually pump out these 1000 planets

  • the main quest will be better than in either Skyrim or F4, but incrementally so

  • weapon and armor crafting from F4 will come back with a vengeance

  • settlement building will come back with a vengeance and will make more sense than in F4

  • lots and lots of radiant quests to keep you venturing towards the next monster cave or bandit outpost

People who loved Starbound will love Starfield, except Starfield really, really needs coöp multiplayer.

I'm sceptical but not because of those reasons. The reason I'm sceptical is because Bethesda's current writers are mediocre, particularly their studio's head writer Emil Pagliarulo.

For previous games they've been coasting on other writers' world building and their original content has been consistently poor.

The one possible saving grace here might be that Emil is now lead designer, which hopefully keeps him away from actual hands on operational design and writing and William Shen who is now lead quest designer is supposedly somewhat competent.

I am torn. I lost all faith in Bethesda with 76, but I was put off immediately by its online nature, so I didn't give it much of a chance. But I snaked access to ESO with the launch of Necrom (my love of morrowind and lovecraft overpowered my disdain for mmos) and the quests I played are actually pretty good! The narrative is decent, the scripts and characters are not grating and sloppy (like 76 and some of 4's addons) - I was overall pretty impressed!

But when they say 1000 planets to explore, one thing immediately and forcefully comes to mind - that cave in Skyrim. It doesn't matter which cave you think of, because they were all the same. Not to a da2 extent, but it became pretty clear by the time I was halfway through Skyrim that they had a bunch of 'cave rooms' they'd connect to make a dungeon, which they then dressed up with whatever the cave was about. I was fine with it in Skyrim, because there was plenty of other things to do, and in fo4 they let you build things yourself which for some reason ameliorates it too, but I pause at the idea of dealing with it in Starfield on a planet-wide procedurally generated scale.

But now I have said all that I realise that actually there is only really one thing that will determine whether I spend a dozen hours playing it or a hundred - what nonsense they try to pull with mod support this time.

Even though Bethesda RPGs have worse writing, worse graphics, worse gameplay, worse animations and more bugs than their AAA WRPG competitors, they have a certain charm that you don’t find in The Witcher or Dragon Age or even (perhaps controversially) Fallout: New Vegas.

I think it’s something about the idea of being a genuine tourist in a huge world full of all kinds of in-progress storylines for you to get involved in. Characters in Bioware or CDProjekt RPGs are real participants in the worlds they inhabit; even side quests usually tie back to the main ‘theme’. The main story is 30-50%, if not more, of these games’ quality content. In Bethesda worlds, the main story is like 5% of the content. You’re much more free, and your character feels more free, to ‘live another life’ in those games, and to go on all kinds of adventures, rather than primarily the main plot. It’s more of an ‘adventure of the week’ game.

The Witcher is like prestige TV, but Skyrim has the patina of an excellent and long-running procedural; less exciting, and perhaps less grand, but with a comfort and a joy of its own.

Like he said, The Witcher and Skyrim are very similar in some ways but have different strengths and weaknesses. Skyrim is less coherent and consistent because it's trying to make many different characters possible to play where as The Witcher really has one main path with few deviations. I loved both but they do different things, just like how I can enjoy a 6 season show that meanders around and a 10 episode show that's a tight contained plot.

I prefer to be optimistic! It’ll still be fun I’m sure. And who knows, Bethesda broke ground in the past maybe they can do so again.

I hate it when my microwave beeps every minute after it's done cooking something. My old microwave had a menu/options button that allowed me to disable the beeps directly. Unfortunately, my new one lacked such a button, and the beeps drive me nuts, especially when I'm in the middle of something and can't get to the microwave in time to open the door to disable the beeps. I don't really know who made this a design standard--pretty sure life will go on if the interval between beeps is lengthened to 5 minutes rather than 1.

I googled my specific make and model, and the top result for the user manual was completely useless. I was ready to give up, but decided to click on a short 40s Youtube video claiming to have the answer, and it in fact did! You just press and hold 1 for 3s to disable button beeps, and press and hold 2 for 3s to disable the cooking-complete beeps. My sanity is restored.

Do reply and let me know if you hate them stupid beeps as much as I do, and if this trick worked on your machine! There must be dozens of us, right?!

I always called it AI, Artificial Impatience.

On the flip side, my new oven timer beeps once and then stops. Missed the beep? Too bad, hope you like fire.

Ugh, my air fryer beeps every two or three seconds for a solid half minute when it's done, and it's loud enough everyone in the neighbourhood surely knows my nuggets are done with the first beep. I am going to try to find a hack like this, that is excellent!

I have physically removed the piezo speakers from most appliances in my life. It's often not that hard.

Beeps were made even worse when I bought a humidifier that has polyphonic beeps just from the knowledge that there's another way. Instead of the flat monotonic beeep it chimes a piiing with the decay and everything, like a digitised rendition of flicking a china bowl. At least our washing machine has a volume setting, the microwave is brutal though and doesn't have a "2" button to try out your suggestion.

I'm just thankful I don't work in a hospital.

How...how do you operate it without a "2" button?

Is that the 2 button on a 0-9 keypad? This microwave doesn't have a keypad. IIRC it has +10s, +1m, +5m, maybe +1h, a button to cycle through power levels and a button to cycle through cooking modes (micro/combi/conv). And a start/stop button.

Presumably a dial

Holy shit, my in-laws have one with a brutal post-cook beep I haven't been able to eliminate. Going to try this next time I visit.

I've been reading the Gulag Archipelago, and despite the depressing tone are some funny lines:

An indignant moralizer insulting someone: "Up yours, and stand still for it too!"

Solzhenitsyn's dark humor at work: "All these parties—the SR’s, the Mensheviks, the An- archists, the Popular Socialists—had for decades only pretended to be revolutionaries; they had worn socialism only as a mask, and for that they went to hard labor, still pretending."

I have weirdly romantic associations with The Gulag archipelago because I proposed to my wife at a used book store, and bought the book later that day.

I'd compare his treatment of the material with McCourt's in Angela's Ashes, always picking humor over self importance, even in tragedy. It makes the book compelling and readable, where it could be a real slog.

In a similar vein to @Pasha’s thread below, what are your favorite RPG games?

Divinity Original Sin 2, Disco Elysium and TES: Oblivion stand out to me.

Other people have mentioned a wide variety of games that I've enjoyed, but one I haven't seen mentioned yet is Hades(although I guess it's different from a standard RPG because it's a rogue lite). Great story, great game play, great music, lasted me a couple dozen hours, 10/10.

Baldur's Gate 2 - IMO the jewel of Bioware's golden age, Dragon Age and Mass Effect might have surpassed it if not for the EA buyout, it holds up great to this day. I keep meaning to try Wrath of the Righteous which seems like as close as I'll likely ever get to a spiritual successor.

Path of Exile - More of a character-optimization simulator than a 'role playing' experience, it's still the best there is at what it does. (and the worldbuilding and lore is surprisingly tight for an ARPG, at least in acts 1-4) And there's nothing wrong with some roll-playing, some of my favorite tabletop campaigns have been filled with nigh-silly theoretical charop bullshit. Once you get to maps Chris Wilson owns your soul.

A few recent indie favorites: AstLibra (a weird Japanese JRPG/beat-em-up hybrid 1-man passion project), Phoenotopia Awakening (a zelda2-like with gorgeous sprite graphics), Crosscode (closest might be Secret of Mana, set inside a MMO world)

I'd say my favorite RPG was the Witcher 3, but only after I modded the fuck out of the gameplay with the Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition mod. The story was chef's kiss, but the stupidity of the combat system made me give up on vanilla playthroughs.

In a lot of RPGs, I despise leveling mechanics, you're telling me that Geralt, a superhuman dude who can block arrow with his sword, needs approximately 17 minutes of constant wailing on a town guard to kill them, and not even get the contents of his wallet for his pain? Oh, sorry, I didn't realize that the guards are always conveniently higher level than you, guess I'll die then.

I actually enjoyed Divinity 1 more than 2, because the former was often gutbustingly funny while the latter took itself too seriously. Good game though, I need to get around to finishing it sometime.

Unfortunately Larian can’t write, and despite hiring new writers for Baldur’s Gate they don’t seem much better.

Yeah I would give a lot to see an RPG like Divinity in scope and combat, with writing on par with Disco Elysium.

Hah I have the same thoughts on both games. Witcher 3s combat was saved by gwent for me though.

The first divinity was hilarious. You kind of had to not take it seriously because you’d die every 10 minutes walking on random traps.

Also,

No one has as many friends as the many with many cheeses!

Have you read this article about the history of Krondor?

That was an excellent read, cheers!

I finished Divinity 2 this week and quite liked it, though I’m not sure I would rank it among my favorite RPGs yet. I loved the Red Prince though, he was a great companion.

My favorites include New Vegas, Three Houses, VTMB, Mass Effect (ME1>ME3>>>>>ME2).

The Elder Scrolls series is my favorite though, with Skyrim being my favorite game of all time. For all their faults, no RPG really offers what the TES games do. Witcher 3 has reactive storytelling, but in exchange for that you will always play Geralt with a preset story. In Skyrim, if you turn left out of Helgen you can have a whole play through without ever becoming the Dragonborn.

Granted, I mod Skyrim to its absolute limit to fix all my issues with it and revamp the mechanics. Oblivion also needs mods to fix the horrible leveling and item scaling situation. Morrowind ironically is the most playable unmodded, all you really need is a visual overhaul and bugfixes to dig into it.

Cyberpunk 2077, because it's a first-person shooter and its text sequences are both short and good.

Aside from what others have mentioned (and it's nice seeing so many fellow FFIX fans), Earthbound (Mother 2), Suikoden I and II, and Stardew Valley if it counts.

I can't believe you are the first person to mention Mother or Suikoden! The first two Suikoden games are quintessential psx rpgs imo. The stories are kind of generic for the most part, but the combat is decent, the strategy sections are awesome, and the characters and world are just fun to spend time with. It's a shame about the rest of the series (well 5 and tierkreis were alright) although Eiyuden Chronicle is supposed to be out this year, and I am cautiously optimistic.

And Earthbound was one of the first jrpgs I ever played, and the reason I gave other jrpgs a chance - sometimes to my detriment (fuck you ffxiii) but also leading to some lesser known gems like Illusion of Gaia and the Shin Megami Tensei games (I was one of those guys who didn't like the Persona games because they were too accessible). And Mother 3 is... I lack the words to express my admiration for it. It is such a beautiful game. The rhythm based combat is simple and elegant, the music is gorgeous and the story is... Beautiful. Like I said, I lack the words. Few games have brought tears to my eyes, but Mother 3 did so multiple times. I have a folder on google drive where I keep files I want on all my systems like background pics, ringtones, take ownership.reg, and essential programs like double commander and teracopy - and mother3.gba, just in case. Fortunately pretty much everything can run a gba emulator these days.

To add to what others have said:

FFVII and FFX - probably two of the greatest JRPGs ever developed.

Fire Emblem Sacred Stones and Fire Emblem Radiant Dawn - in the somewhat uneven timeline of Fire Emblem games, I think these two hold up very well.

Dark Chronicle - though I shudder to think how many hours of my teenage years this game ate, I wouldn't want them back.

Bravely Default/Second - despite a pretty disappointing narrative, some of the most engaging and entertaining battle systems in any JRPG.

Sacred stones is one of those games I played so much I had to get a new cartridge. I loved grinding in that tower.

Divinity Original Sin 2

Original Sin I and II are great-looking but flawed RPGs. The pixel hunting and buggy quests really pushed me to my limit, on top of II's bizarre physical vs. magic armor system.

Disco Elysium

One of my favorite RPGs. Excellent writing that's elevated with the full voice-over cast. There's a lot of debate whether Disco Elysium is truly an RPG. Nevertheless, everyone should experience it.

Alpha Protocol is an action-RPG, but I think it's criminally underrated. It's an over-the-top and unabashedly comedic take on modern Bourne-esque spycraft, which to me almost lent it an Archer vibe (although it predates that show). The mechanics are rather poorly balanced but still fun, and the characters are so well-written I didn't really mind the flaws in the game design.

Final Fantasy 9.

A mix of comic theatrics and serious exposition, I think it's the best FF out there next to Tactics. Uematsu is at the apex of his compositional powers, and beyond some minor theft (from himself) made excellent music and score with strong melodies. Also the best characters and character development of any final fantasy.

Valkyrie Profile - anime norse influence before it got really popular. Unique gameplay.

Do roguelikes count? I've played a whole lot of them, like Dwarf Fortress, Cataclysm DDA, ADOM, and of course NetHack (for which I have to shamelessly brag that I hold the shared realtime speedrun world record in, from back when tool-assisted runs were allowed)

That is an absolutely insane project. I love it.

Thanks! If you're wondering why on earth we named it SWAGGINZZZ, it's due to us messing up the execution a bunch of times, and since we created a new account/player every time we pretty quickly exhausted all the good names we could think of. The final run was named that because we were just testing things and didn't expect that one to actually succeed..!

Folks have already sung the praises of my heavy hitters (glad to see FFT getting so much love), so I'll add:

Shadowrun: Dragonfall

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Skyrim VR (modded, at least lightly)

Skyrim falls down in a lot of places compared to its predecessors in terms of story, characters, RPG mechanics, etc. Where it shines is its beautiful open world filled with interesting locations. And dear Lord is it a marvel to explore that world and its dungeons in VR. Unfortunately Skyrim VR out of the box is...lacking as a VR game, but with 3 mods (VRIK, HIGGS, PLANCK) and graphical mods to taste for textures and lighting, it gets there.

Fallout 4 has similar highs and lows to Skyrim so should also benefit from VR, but unfortunately I have been told that while Skyrim VR out of the box is barebones but functional, Fallout 4 VR is a bit of a mess.

Elden Ring

Ahh I want this but I’m a cheap bitch. Also I’ve heard some people complain it’s too easy?

It's worth it.

How easy it is depends on your build too, and if you look up any tutorials. If you go into it completely blind with 0 Fromsoft experience and look up no help, I guarantee anyone would struggle with it.

Unless you're a veteran of souls games I would not call it easy. It's probably the hardest game I've played that's come out in the past 10 years (though I have never played a souls game before ER). Also there are ways to make it even harder, such as not using summons.

It's a bit of mixed bag. Some things are incredibly op to the point that they trivialise the game (even more so at release) but outside of that I wouldn't say it's too easy. If anything I feel it's is poorly balanced compared to earlier entries, since because they kind of expect you to have some of the OP things they have overtuned some encounters to reintroduce some challenge, which makes playing without the OP things unfun.

Elden Ring is apparently easy if you've played souls games before and hard if you're accustomed to the typical game released nowadays where you are gently handheld through cinematic spectacle you occassionally get to influence by pressing buttons and moving your thumbstick.

I haven't looked into that complaint in depth (attempting to avoid spoilers until I have a good enough setup to play it myself) but I would expect most people making it are long-time veterans of the rest of the Soulsborne games, which skews their perspective a bit. If you haven't played the other games to death, or if you aren't looking to have your balls busted, it probably wouldn't be an issue. Though, as mentioned, I'm trying to avoid spoilers so I could be wrong.

BG1-2, Gothic1-2, Morrowind, New Vegas, VTMB, NWN (for the custom modules and persistent worlds), Kotor1-2, Torment, Disco Elysium.

For slightly less RPGish games i also like Witcher3 and FFIX.

For non strategy/tactics games I really have trouble enjoying them unless they have a great soundtrack.

BG 1-2 are probably the games ive spent the most time with. Incredibly fun and challenging when played ironman with SCS+ascension (not recommended for first time players).

What are VTMB and NWN?

Vampire the masquerade: bloodlines

Neverwinter nights

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines and Neverwinter Nights, respectively.

Witcher 3, Mass Effect 1 and 2, TES: Morrowind, Shadowrun Returns. Morrowind in particular really is my first love, I love everything about the setting to this day.

Deus Ex Human Revolution and Dishonored, also Prey.

I watched a long ass video on the Tamriel Rebuilt project, and I gotta say it’s the most impressive passion project I’ve seen. Just ridiculous how much time and effort that the team has put in, despite all the turmoil and drama internally.

It’s a shame because I really can’t get into Morrowind, combination of not having good controller support and dated graphics/combat system. Alas.

Why can't you play with kb&m? Disability?

Yeah I have carpal tunnel issues - although as I've mentioned elsewhere I see it more as a sort of mind-body stress issue than an actual disability. I can still use mouse + kb fine for work, but playing pc games is a bit too much over any extended period.

Just played Prey, definitely underrated

Dragon Age: Origins is probably the best one I've played.

What’s good about it? Story, gameplay, soundtrack, or all of the above?

I don't remember the soundtrack, but the things I liked included:

  • the worldbuilding: the dwarves and the elves, the not-Byzantines and the not-Ottomans, magic and religion all have an interesting twist to them that is reflected in how the story unfolds

  • the plot: it has one annoying hole the size of a refrigerator truck, but nothing some fanon can't patch up. Otherwise, it's a nice plot that actually weaves your backstory into the game, with a clear goal and some nice twists

  • the character build system: while it looks simplistic when you start, it gets better and you can craft some pretty interesting builds

  • the combat system: it's sufficiently complex to be entertaining and actually requires you to care about the positioning of your party, but simple enough that you can get enough feedback. I disliked how Pillars of Eternity made you feel like throwing punches in a dream

  • the companions: it's not peak Bioware companions, but they don't try to steal the spotlight and are interwoven with the main plot. I loved the one that hated the way you usually talk to NPCs in RPGs

Things I didn't like:

  • the aforementioned plot hole. There's a big twist in the first act that is never rationalized properly

  • the enemies. If your ostensibly new and original monsters end up looking like Peter Jackson's orcs, either redo the design or just call them orcs

Gameplay is great. You have a genuine party that you can control in real-time with pauses. The character-building is DnD-based (STR-DEX-CON, etc) as are the spells (cone of cold!). There's plenty of settings and stories, racial strife and noble houses, otherwordly dangers and mundane politicking.

I don't remember the soundtrack.

It's just a really well-made DnD style RPG video game, which besides Planescape: Torment you don't typically see.

DA2 and DA:I I never played and don't really want to. They turned the series into more action-RPG than I care for.

It does amuse me that you chose Torment as your example. Out of all its contemporaries, it has to be one of the least conventional (and best written).

The story is excellent. Gameplay was extremely challenging, at least in the beginning, for me. It's based around the DnD ruleset I think. While if you play it today the technical limitations are obvious (large battles are pathetic) the skyboxes and environments suggested a massive world around you.

In many ways a typical Bioware RPG, but just a lot of different ways to play and in that fantasy setting as opposed to something like Mass Effect.

Soundtrack was excellent too.

Disco Elysium and Planescape: Torment for narrative RPGs.

Fallout 2, Fallout: New Vegas and Dragon Age: Origins for regular RPGs.

The Last Sovereign and The Spirit Engine for indie shoestring-budget RPGs.

Ivalice (RIP) for MUDs.

Everything below this line is not really an RPG.

Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger for JRPGs.

Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre: The Knights of Lodis, Front Mission and Bahamut Lagoon for TRPGs.

Seiken Densetsu 3 and Terranigma for ARPGs.

Have you ever played Langrisser 2? It’s the natural companion to those TRPGs.

No, thanks for the suggestion.

I have fond memories of the SNES emulator version. There’s a recentish remake on Steam, but I heard it’s heavy on fan service. The core gameplay and soundtrack should be great regardless.

but I heard it’s heavy on fan service

Can't be worse than Amayui/Kamidori

I see there are a lot of tactics fans here. I'm curious if you or @guajalote have ever tried Fort Triumph? It's a relatively new game, but I've been playing it and it's a blast. A bit like Heroes of Might and Magic with an overworld component, but the writing and humor is perfect for me.

I have not, will give it a try.

No, I haven't. I tried quite a few games (FFTA, La Pucelle, Disgaea, Shadowrun Returns, Mutant: Year Zero, Invisible, Inc., Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mask), but bounced off of all of them.

MY0 was probably the most successful attempt, but I am an incorrigible hoarder of consumables items, so a game with a limited number of healing items ultimately stressed me out too much.

Modern tactical games are often obssessed with tight mechanics: situational skills and weird classes must be pruned, math must be simple, the fewer characters you have in your party, the better. I very much prefer the old-school approach with Cheesecake Factory-sized lists of abilities and classes. Yes, most of them are useless, some of them are broken, but you get a different sense of "pride and accomplishment" from finding out which is which and either blasting through the game or beating it with a gimmicky party than you get from cracking the designer's puzzle of a level, and I prefer the former to the latter.

I've been enjoying Triangle Strategy recently. Though there is very little customization or unit development in the game, the units themselves are highly varied and specialized, and on Hard you might have to resort to 'cheesy' play.

Ahh I see. I'm surprised Disgaea wasn't a hit for you since that game has a ridiculous amount of complexity, too much for me personally.

I'm sad you didn't like Fell Seal, to me that's one of the most faithful "FFT type" games I've ever played. It's definitely pared down, but I had a blast. Story was a bit weak, but oh well.

Fort Triumph is shallow on first look but the physics system is quite deep - almost every object in the environment is breakable, and there are all sorts of items and combos you can put together. Unfortunately you do lose all but one item after each Act, so you might not like that part.

Ahh I see. I'm surprised Disgaea wasn't a hit for you since that game has a ridiculous amount of complexity, too much for me personally.

That's a different kind of complexity. FFT is broad: Samurais do this, Thieves do that, Summoners do the third thing. Geomancers worry about the type of terrain, Archers worry about the height of terrain, Calculators worry about the prime factors of the height of terrain. Zodiac signs really matter when you're doing something like an SSCC, otherwise they just slightly randomize your damage. You can combine the abilities of different jobs, but when you do, you do that at your own pace.

Disgaea or Fae Tactics, which I didn't buy after reading the reviews, try to stack the mechanics: you have to worry about lots of mechanics on every one of your units.

I actually wanted to like Fell Seal, but the art style was just not my cup of tea. I know it was designed as a faithful spiritual sequel to FFT, so maybe I'll give it another chance.

Edge case, but I tried played System Shock 2 several times but couldn't get past the clunkiness and fiddliness. Gave it another go last year and it finally clicked for me and I couldn't put it down.

The trailer on steam is quite compelling, I'm impressed usually trailers are terrible at conveying story. The graphics look at little tough for me to get into.... I might give it a go if I'm struggling to find something.

Anything you can say to sweeten the deal without spoiling the plot?

Seconding everything Folamh said.

Consider this video review for an explanation of the premise, the production values, and the appeal without unmarked spoilers.

It was written and designed by the same team that made the original BioShock (BioShock is effectively a spiritual sequel to this game), so if you liked BioShock, it's effectively that but with the complexity and difficulty ramped up. It's been a huge influence on numerous other games, including Prey and Alien Isolation. Despite the boxy dated graphics, it's a genuinely tense and unnerving game owing to its effective sound design (recommend muting the music though). One of the first enemies you encounter in the game is a psychic monkey whose brain extrudes its skull.

You could always look into the newly released faithful remake of SS1 if you find the graphics of the original sequel too rough.

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. The only RPG I've ever really loved, longstanding candidate for my favourite game ever. Impossibly immersive, cleverly written, funny and spooky.

I've heard great things, but never picked it up. I've read some of the lore as well and it's definitely the most interesting take on the vampire mythos I've seen - and that's after reading quite a bit.

Do you know if the PC version has controller support? I can't play with PC/Mouse but interested in picking it up.

I very much doubt it would have native controller support, but it still has an active modding community so I'm sure a relevant mod exists somewhere.

Disco Elysium. Pillars of Eternity 2. Wasteland 3. The original Fallout games. SW KOTOR 1. The Mass Effect trilogy apart from the ending. Witcher 3. And if Deus Ex counts as an RPG, that was one of my favorite games ever.

Edit: forgot to mention the Persona games! I love 3, 4, 5 highly.

I sunk a bit of time into Wasteland 3, but bounced off well before finishing it. The writing seemed good at first, but it got too goofy for me to take it seriously at one point. That, and the combat got increasingly bad as I got later into the game. I think I was on the hardest difficulty, and every fight either felt like a cakewalk or impossibly brutal.

Witcher 3 is also amazing - forgot that one! I downloaded a mod for Gwent and did a full Gwent playthrough, it was excellent. I should go back and play the DLCs.

PoE, Mass Effect, and Persona are definitely on my list now. What did you like about them specifically?

Wasteland 3 does get a bit too goofy, you're right. Not sure why I listed it so quickly on my list, it's only somewhere in my top 20 probably. Also forgot to mention that Morrowind was one of my favorite experiences.

Pillars of Eternity games: I think one of the biggest strengths is the world-building, which, as orthoxerox says, is quite different in PoE 2 due to going to a Pacific islands setting. Some people favor PoE 1 though. 1 has a stronger main storyline, and a much longer one. 2 has a lot of great content aside from the main quest. Anyway, it's a cool universe with a bunch of gods interfering in mortals' affairs. It just makes sense as a world. The language use is pretty cool too. It's semi-inspired by real world history and cultures. You have one culture that's Romance language inspired, so you can kinda guess at many of the words' meanings, and it all just works. The voice acting is fantastic too IMO. And the soundtrack is great, sets the atmosphere kinda like the one in Morrowind did.

There's great reactivity and roleplaying in these games. You develop dispositions and reputations which a lot of NPCs react to.

Another strength of the Pillars games is that any build can work, due to how the attributes and skills etc are set up. You can have a wizard with high "might" because might affects damage for all attacks, and low mental skills and you can make him/her work.

Graphically it's almost exactly like the old isometric Infinity engine games, with beautiful backgrounds with 3d characters on top. PoE2 looks a lot better than 1 in terms of the 3d.

Mass Effect: the first truly cinematic space opera experience. Here too the world-building is great. High production values. I'd say the story, main character and side characters is the main strength in the whole trilogy, but it didn't stick the landing. Definitely worth a playthrough though. The first game is dated in some ways so be prepared for that.

Persona games: Could talk for an hour about these. P5 is perhaps the most slick and responsive game I've seen. The UX is top notch. But what I love about all the P games is the combination of a pretty intriguing life sim rpg and dungeon crawling. You spend about 50/50 in each. Half as a Japanese high school student who needs to forge social bonds and answer exam questions, take part time jobs etc, and half as a persona user fighting 'shadows'. It's all pretty Jung inspired. Some of the social relationships actually feel meaningful. There are many bonds you can rank up, one for each 'arcana', and you get to help the person develop and overcome challenges, by picking the right responses and hanging out with them. Top notch music that sets the tone, good voice acting and writing.

If you're going to play the Persona games you have a bit of a dilemma because while there's recently been a PC port of P3, it's not a good one, and they're releasing a much better looking remake of it next year. Though, there's no reason you have to start with 3. They're separate stories with different characters. Persona 4 Golden (each game has a significant 'expanded edition' that improves the game) is on PC, and if you don't mind PS2 era graphics, you might start with that one. If you want a modern game, you might start with Persona 5 Royal, but if so it might be tough to play P3 and P4 later because of the many QoL improvements in P5R.

I would skip PoE and go straight to PoE 2. It fixes a lot of issues with the first installment, like replacing the most vanilla setting (it's not, but you have to care to notice that it's not Forgotten Realms) with Pirates of the Hawai'ian, being set in the most exciting time period for the location, making wizards actually useful and having optional turn-based combat that is supposedly less floaty than RTwP.

It keeps the brilliant disposition mechanics that are much better than just rolling for speech.

Some drawbacks of PoE2 are the lackluster main quest and the companion relationship mechanic that either works too well when your party has the right NPCs or causes them to hate each other if it doesn't. Both totally fixable in PoE3, but alas, we're not getting it any time soon.

I'm not sure if it completely counts as an RPG, but Final Fantasy Tactics is an incredible game with one of the best storylines I've ever seen in a video game.

I enjoy Divinity Original Sin 2 and am looking forward to the full release Baldur's Gate 3, which is made by the same company and appears to be a similar game except using the rules of DnD 5th edition.

I hope BG3 is good, but I can't say I like the art direction. Why's everything got to be so clean and perfect?

but Final Fantasy Tactics is an incredible game with one of the best storylines I've ever seen in a video game.

Can't agree strongly enough. A lot of my strongest memories of my childhood are of playing that game, hell I even played it on vacations. It was truly a masterpiece. The gameplay and combat system were incredible too, and so innovative. Although some people claim it was stolen from Tactics Ogre....

Have you played any of the early access for BG3? I have been holding off but a couple of my friends have told me they're unimpressed with it. I'm trying to reserve judgment.

I haven't, because I've been told it's very limited. After almost 3 years in EA I think it's still pretty locked down in terms of progression and content. So who knows how the full game will be.

Have you played any of the early access for BG3? I have been holding off but a couple of my friends have told me they're unimpressed with it. I'm trying to reserve judgment.

I have. It's an extremely limited amount of content so it's hard to judge; I assume it's around 5% of what the final game will be. It reminds me of Divinity visually and in terms of gameplay. I really enjoy the DnD 5e rules system so I like that aspect of it as well.

Although some people claim it was stolen from Tactics Ogre....

Not stolen, Square hired the designer of Tactics Ogre to make FFT.

Ahh interesting. I've been meaning to do a dive and write up a post on the history of tactics games at some point. I'm always fascinated by how different niche genres develop.

To the tune of "I Love Rock and Roll" by Joan Jett:

I love Uncle Ted

Put another bomb in the mailbox baby

I love Uncle Ted

Put another bomb in the mailbox baby

I love Uncle Ted

Humanity over industry

•

I saw him thinkin' there 'bout man and machine

The boons and banes that come with industry

Critiques both true and strong, but

Just like old King Kong

I could tell it wouldn't be long

'Til he was razing, build-ings

I could tell he couldn't abide

In-dustrial so-ciety, singing

•

I love Uncle Ted

Put another bomb in the mailbox baby

(Note for the nerds: The song is a cover. Originally by The Arrows.)

What are you saying?

It seems to me that he's making a parody of a popular song, changing the subject of the song from "rock and roll" to the famous evil terrorist/based monke Uncle Ted.

People sometimes call the Unabomber "uncle Ted".

I get that part. Are you advocating we follow his example? Please speak plainly here.

It's a joke I thought of last night.

Aren't jokes traditionally funny?

This is the Friday Fun thread. This degree of aggressiveness would be out of place even in the CW thread. Knock it off.

Sorry, I'll try to watch myself in the future.

I really didn't mean my comment to come across as meanly as it apparently did. Ted Kaczynski's reign of terror is not commonly fodder for jokes.

Ted Kaczynski's reign of terror is not commonly fodder for jokes.

Er... it really is, though. It really, truly is. Though I suppose even in 1996 some people wondered about the propriety of such things.

Humor is often off the table here at the Motte because so many standard approaches to humor violate our discussion standards in one way or another. But particularly in the Friday Fun thread, I think the principle of charity is especially important in connection with attempts at humor.

A joke is an attempt to be funny. This joke didn't land for you, fair enough, but there's no need to be a dick about it.

Favorite TV Series anyone?

Live action? Probably the 1995 revival of The Outer Limits; it's like a different science fiction movie each week, most of which are as good as any short story from the golden age. Early Game of Thrones was great as well; shame about the last 2 seasons. Deep Space Nine had its moments, at least when it stopped fucking around with The Prophets and Vic Fontaine long enough to remember the epic multi-season Dominion War arc; "In the Pale Moonlight" remains the greatest Star Trek episode of all time.

Western animation? Besides the usual answers of Gargoyles, Avatar, and the DCAU, I am also very fond of Shadow Raiders and Roswell Conspiracies. The former is a military science fiction nihilistic cosmic horror show for kids; I particularly liked the way conflicts are solved by armies/fleets in massive battles instead of a 5-man team saving the world, which is something that bugged me about TV shows ever since I was little. The latter is basically The X-Files, except that they actually planned out the plot all the way through instead of making shit up as they went along; the series has a fantastic ending that explains all the mysteries and ties up all the narrative threads.

Anime? Damn, that's hard. The Promised Neverland, I guess; easily the most rational show I have ever seen on television (too bad they never made a second season). Erased was a 10/10 for the first 10 episodes; the last two episodes were infuriating a little weak, but even so the series as a whole holds up astonishingly well. And of course the 2003 version of Fullmetal Alchemist; I know most people prefer Brotherhood, but that's because they are wrong.

Firefly. One of the best character-driven sci-fi series. Ended too soon but enough to make an excellent show.

I liked Dollhouse as well even if the first season started poorly.

Community. Last season or two jumped the shark.

Cowboy Bebop. Still the best anime series ever made.

I recently finished the Amazon show Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. A tad too 'Mary sue' the last season is a bit weak, but other than it's pretty fun show. Gives some 'Mad Men' aesthetic.

Breaking Bad is our modern civilizational epic. Better Call Saul is a prequel which is just as good.

I always thought if there were a novelization of Breaking Bad the full title would be "Breaking Bad: or, the Modern Ozymandias" due to its obvious literary associations.

Never understood the hype.

Ever? Malcolm in the middle , Kaamelott (french), Cowboy Bebop, Arcane

The Sandbaggers. Someone on the old place recommended it, and it is the best spy show ever made.

Attack on Titan, though I wish it had ended at the end of season 3 instead of turning into what it is now. Whenever I show it to someone, I tell them to stop watching before season 4.

Are you referring to the season that began this year? I haven't watched it yet, but by god loved everything that came before and will eventually watch it just for the closure.

Everything since MAPPA took over making the show from WIT aka the “Final Season” which has pretty much been 3 seasons of content. Barring a few amazing scenes I really dislike what it did with the characters and themes of the story.

Mad Men

Supernatural - There's a lot of it. I like the relationship between the brothers and the importance of family.

Of course, it's an older show...

New season coming out in a month

Halt and Catch Fire, one of the most underrated series in AMC's catalog. The show follows a group of programmers, businessmen, and families during the 1980s computer boom in Texas. The show is four seasons and packed with excellent acting and writing.

Rome, Arrested Development, and The Wire have all been mentioned, so to add some variety I'll say The Venture Bros. I rewatched it these past few weeks and it still blows me away how good it is. It starts off as a pretty straight forward send up of Johnny Quest, but the more it develops the more it becomes an exploration of the dysfunction of being raised by tv, and of living in a world where technology outpaces our capacity to understand it, and the way older generations look down on the younger ones for not having to deal with the very hardships they fought to eliminate, and how that gets taken for granted and the apathy it generates and... I could be here all day. And it manages to do all that while also being funny and fun. God I wish it wasn't cancelled.

Also I have been on a detective procedural kick recently, so my favourites there are - high concept wise: Person of Interest (pop-sci ai powered batman), comedy wise: Psych (fake psychic solves crimes through shenanigans) and no frills wise: law & order criminal intent (just great mystery solving with minimal personal drama).

God I wish it wasn't cancelled.

I managed to completely forget about the movie being in production until a few weeks ago and am now trying to avoid hopping on the hype train for the next ~month.

Dude you have made my day, because I had forgotten about the movie too! They better tell us who that bear with a knife is.

I consider all of the following shows to be basically one single show since they involve a great deal of overlap in the people involved and have a similar style of humor: Mr. Show, Tom Goes to the Mayor, Tim & Eric Awesome Show, John Benjamin has a Van, and Nathan for You. Would nominate those collectively as my favorite.

What do you feel about Home Movies?

Love it

Ha, Nathan for You is great. Have you seen The Rehearsal?

Yes, I love that show as well, perhaps should be part of the list above.

The Rehearsal

Outstanding as it's demented. Highly recommended.

The Terror, Chernobyl, Utopia (the UK channel 4 show from 2013), season 1 of Twin Peaks, Scrubs for its moralizing.

If I had to name just one it'd be the Wire, no question about it. Asking people what they like is fantastic for engagement though.

The Wire

  • Has great performance throughout with a diverse cast

  • Operates almost entirely in a morally ambiguous space

  • Keeps characters for an extensive period of time,

  • Gradually ramps up the complexity of the story (introducing whole new societal factions almost each season)

  • Avoids "Jumping the shark" in later seasons for excitement or...

  • Taking the easy way out by having main characters avoid consequences for actions

  • Has a masterful, if cynical, ending

As I've rewatched it over the years, it always has something extra to teach me regardless of where I stand on socio-political issues. It's timeless but also represents the post 9/11 era extremely well.

Other greats:

  • Drama/Serious

    • The Wire

    • Mad Men

    • Succession

    • Dexter (Through S6)

    • Black Mirror

    • Skins (Maybe not good for everyone, but lots of great college memories from it)

    • GBBO

  • Animated

    • Rick and Morty (only just started watching, but love it)

    • The Simpsons (through season 7)

    • Adventure Time

  • Comedy

    • Arrested Development

    • Party Down

    • Veep

    • The Good Place

    • The Inbetweeeners

    • The Office (Till Michael Scott leaves)

    • Parks and Rec (Seasons 2-5)

GBBO

....Great British Bake-Off?

Don't get me wrong, I've always thought it made for unusually appealing TV, but it feels a little out of place on that list.

Yeah the category it's under isn't accurate but I didn't want to make a whole section for "competition shows that are great at pretending the drama and challenge is authentic"

The Good Place is incredible. I wish more shows actually delved into complex philosophical questions, but I suppose it's a niche audience. Also Kristen Bell is super hot.

When I watch Ms. Bell I can't stop thinking about how hot she is. Also one of the many reasons why Forgetting Sarah Marshall is awesome.

Hah, that's my favorite movie! Jason Segal is a fucking gem. You should watch The Muppet Movie and Get Him to the Greek as well if you liked FSM - the latter is actually a kind of sequel in the same universe.

Liked both quite a bit. Had a debate on The 5 year Engagement with my wife last night. Very similar feel in that it took a more realistic view of relationships and grief at them ending/devolving (ironically better than many "serious" relationship movies). But even as a comedy I felt it would have been better if Jason Segel and Emily Blunt hadn't ended up together. I end up feeling more uncomfortable and unhappy at the end of the movie, whereas I've watched FSM at least 6 times at this point (including in Hawaii on vacation).

The Good Place is decent, but anyone thinking of watching should keep in mind that it does bludgeon you over the head with progressive-isms which are immensely hard to ignore. Zero HP Lovecraft, whatever you may think about him, has a pretty good summary of how the ideology is interwoven through the show's plot.

Read the article - well written as always, and agree with most of it. The unredeemable white male character at the end took some very special looking past.

Nice write up, thanks for the link.

So... it does, at least in the second to last season. I toughed it out till the final and appreciated it.

Admittedly this is as an atheist who would have been considered socially liberal 12 years ago. I think I'm sensitive to culture war ham-fists and it had bought enough good will by the end to have me grit my teeth and finish.

Babylon Five. Terrible acting (with a few exceptions) and gimmicky special effects. But great story. G’kar and Londo make the whole series worth it.

Seconding Babylon 5! The Minbari are the best alien race ever created hands down.

Recently finished my nth rewatch of Twin Peaks as my girlfriend hadn't seen it. Granted I'm not a big TV person, but for all its flaws I've never seen anything else like it, and every rewatch feels like coming home. I watched The Return a few years ago but it didn't make as big an impression on me as the original series. My girlfriend is curious about The Return so we'll probably end up watching it too.

I had a difficult time the first time I watched The Return because I had such a strong desire to see the old characters I loved and have things resolved (silly summer child!). I watched it again a bit later and really enjoyed it as something different.

I understand Lynch and Frost's desire not to repeat themselves, not to indulge the desire for fan service, and to take the series in a radically different direction. With such a long interval between instalments, any attempt to slavishly emulate the vibe of the original series probably would have failed anyway. A creator who knows exactly what the audience wants and deliberately denies it to them can sometimes make for a very impactful artistic statement (e.g. Metal Gear Solid 2, one of the most powerful video games I've ever played - indeed, one of the most powerful works of fiction I've ever experienced in any medium).

For all that, The Return didn't quite click for me. I don't think it quite achieved the standard of "radically different from the original series, but still just as good in a very different way", and I say this as a huge fan of Lynch in general (Mulholland Drive is one of my favourite films ever, and The Return probably has more in common with that, stylistically and tonally, than the original series of Twin Peaks). A lot of it just seemed needlessly padded. But perhaps it'll grow on me after a second watch.

The Leftovers, without a doubt.

A very complex exploration of mystery, faith, loss & grief. Immaculately acted, very unpredictable. Exactly the right length, three seasons.

As perfect an ending as I’ve ever seen. Watching it was literally life changing for me.

I second the previous Deadwood recommendations.

European version of Borgia (Borgia: Faith and Fear), it truly captures middle age Europe; its authenticity is unmatched.

Renaissance Europe.

The Magicians

I read The Magicians when everyone raved about it and it just seemed to be Harry Potter and the Need for Prozac. Can you sell me on the TV show?

Unlike the other respondents here I liked the books but didn't care for the show (watched a few eps).

The show is miles ahead of the books. The characters are fully realized as are the implications of a world created by fickle gods for their personal entertainment. The show has more humor and depth alike. It feels like the spiritual successor to Buffy and would rate highly under Vonneguts system. Later seasons get progressively more woke which is progressively more distracting with major trouble in season 5.

The TV show is definitely not for everyone, but if you can tolerate some wokeish themes of like 10 years ago I’d recommend it.

They age up the characters so they’re in university, and add more so it’s an ensemble instead of just a navel gazing story about how awesome Quentin is. The plot is pretty different although they stick to the roots.

The best part of the show is the character development, and the relationships between the characters. Even though there’s a lot of magic and fantasy, the show manages to ground itself by deeply exploring the pain of the characters, how they deal with it, and how it changes them. Bad things happen often, and not always for good reason. The cast has to push against a brutal, uncaring universe and somehow find purpose and meaning despite that.

That being said it’s not all doom and gloom, there are many heartwarming moments, fun escapades, and incredible musical numbers. I enjoyed almost all aspects of it.

Yeah if you don’t have any stomach for woke stuff, it’s probably not for you. That being said it definitely doesn’t go overboard into wokeness like some of the more recent shows coming out.

The fifth season jumps the shark a little bit, but I enjoyed it.

No no, I read the book and you're on the right track, the first book was mildly interesting as a decent portrayal of depression, that drew my eye since I was depressed myself.

The story didn't go anywhere, and I'm left wanting my time back.

I’ve read the series a couple times, and the show is far better than the books.

Fall Of Eagles, or maybe I, Claudius

For comedies, The Office (original). Dramas, The Wire.

Honourable mentions: Deadwood, Party Down, Community, The Thick of It.

HBO's Rome, chock full of absolutely stellar performances (James Purefoy's Marc Antony is perhaps my favorite performance across all of television) and while the historicity leaves quite a bit to be desired it does such a fantastic job at creating a sense of time and place.

Other favorite would definitely be The Expanse, quality is not even across the run (first 3 episodes are unfortunately among the weakest which can put people off), but it reaches some outstanding heights in seasons 2 and 3 especially. Highly recommended to anyone who likes Sci-Fi.

We just started the Expanse and finished episode 2 last night. Can't tell you how relieved I am to hear it gets better!

Yeah, I actually bounced off the series when I first discovered it, went back into it due to the recommendation of someone who I trust in such matters and almost gave up again before I got to the good stuff.

Learning that the book series it was based off was itself loosely based off someone running a RPG on a web forum made a lot of the early installment weirdness suddenly make sense to me.

I really love Rome but I think it was really hobbled by it being canceled. One more season to flesh out the pacing would have made it a masterpiece.

I'd add Deadwood to this list. It's a bit dry at times, but overall very watchable unlike almost all of television.

But overall my favorite is Rome. No contest. I'm fine with never watching TV again, but I do intend to watch Rome for a third time at some point.

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