Definitely Shadow of the Erdtree! I’ve already beaten the Dancing Lion boss. Just started playing WoW Classic again too and found a guild filled with super nice people. So that’s been fun.
It’s true. I still routinely go back to the first Dark Souls and remember the amount of time I dumped into it trying to keep progressing. The amount of times I’d die and then test out a new strategy on something as simple as dispatching 5 enemies in a series of hallways, or going down the rabbit hole on boss fight strategies. I have the hardcover guide for the first DS game and it’s amazing. It’s weird how the brutality of those games can also be something you get peace from. Souls games are still among the few that I can truly disconnect with and be completely pulled in. Just talking about it makes me want to start a new character.
I really had to embrace summoning and I was fortunate enough to have some nice people. I’m so used to people being dicks on video games, but the soulslike players have been pretty awesome.
The game is amazing. It was easily GOTY for me when I got it and I dumped around 300 hours into it. That said, there are a lot of players out there that really deserve to enjoy it, but it’s insanely tough and not ideal for some people, especially if you’re someone that plays mostly for the story. So I appreciate that the ER devs are thinking about this to some degree.
I just installed Nobara on my gaming laptop. The benefits are preconfigured settings, and apps like Steam and Lutris come preinstalled. These distros are a convenience over trying to trudge through all of that stuff yourself. I was able to get things up and running quickly because someone was nice enough to trudge through that stuff themselves.
The “bad” ones just float to the top when a government is around long enough. It’s human nature. The ones seeking power and money see others seeking the same, and they look at them as a rung on a ladder. They help each other because it benefits them. They actively work to shut out the “good” ones because they know they’ll lose their spot to them if they aren’t careful. Suddenly the “good” ones are lost in the noise. The incorruptible become powerless.
It’s similar to the police force in the US, for example. People go in with good intentions, but the force has been around long enough that the mad dogs have already permeated all of the top ranks. So the “good” ones either wash out, or they assimilate. One of my relatives washed out, while the one that had been there much longer turned into a massive racist. Which one do you think climbed the ranks quicker?
Power structures automatically attract selfish, self-serving people that just become worse offenders the more wealthy and powerful they become. Power is a vacuum after all, and there are plenty of bad people standing in line to fill it. This is why I don’t trust a single politician. Whether they want to admit it or not, under that facade of wanting to change their city or “do good,” there is some underlying desire for power and attention. That doesn’t mean none of them do anything good in their time though; it just means we should be cautious.
As soon as I smell authoritarianism, it’s a no from me. Even as someone that reads communist and socialist theory. I think people take too much of the past and try to apply it as-is to the world of today. But it doesn’t work. Modern times require modernized ideas, and I sometimes wish people had more imagination.