I see this as an anti-ad. By that, I mean that it takes almost $30 to satisfy a deprived appetite at the chain these days.

Furthermore, Taco Bell has not only increased prices since 2020, but has reduced portion sizes and cut back on staffing.

I stopped going there even though I prefer their flavors. Now, Del Taco is the better bang-for-buck Mexican fast food option in this dystopian capitalist hellscape.

Shit, even the local taco trucks/pop-up stands/street vendors of any quality charge out the ass now around where I live. 🤷‍♂️

For more on the story, we go now to our senior retro/retro-inspired video games correspondent, GmanLives

Do not aggravate the captain again. ☝️

Try force-closing the Reddit app. 👍 👍

Two years after the Microsoft acquisition and now the Head of Publishing and the Lead Quest Designer are leaving Bethesda after the release of the divisive “Starfield”. Are these the first significant signs of a post-acquisition shake up? Will more key individuals be leaving the company?

I would say that any game could be remastered beautifully if done well while properly honoring the original. Many games will be become unplayable for people as CPU/GPU architecture, display technology, and software development marches into the future. It’s important to have a way for the old games to remain playable with little-to-troubleshooting for the majority of players. Remastering games is a way to have that and make them look and play better as well.

On the extreme side of this, we have the “System Shock” remake by Night Dive Studios. That’s “REMAKE”, not “REMASTER”. This was was a staggering undertaking and a real passion project by the devs. The result is nothing short of a stunning, triumphant achievement that perfectly walks a fine line between what to change and what not to. They did a fantastic job, IMO.

Please see my original comment’s EDIT section for clarification.

I wouldn’t put Starfield into the same family in most cases, just in the case that it was overhyped and made people buy it before anyone knew they were being taken for a ride by the developers.

I’m not convincing people they didn’t enjoy it. I’m merely suggesting that you could be experiencing choice-supportive bias. If you’re truly happy with your investment, then by all means, continue enjoying it. Just don’t be shocked when someone with different standards shares an opinion that blindsides you and compels you counter it.

Ever met someone who bought a crappy car and they’re like, “oh yeah, I love this car”, and you’re thinking, “I would never buy a car like that. No one should” They obviously see a value in it that you do not, however justified their view of that purchase is.

I just think that most of the long-time Bethesda fans, if they haven’t already, will one day realize that Starfield wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. If they’re relatively new to Bethesda games, that’s probably a different story for a different generation of gamers. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Perhaps you should invest in an anemometer because you seem to be having difficulty telling which way the wind is blowing here. I’m simply an objective buyer that does their research before pulling the trigger on products.

I’m sensing a bit of choice-supportive bias. In other words, people who’s judgement is clouded by the fact that they invested money and/or time into something, so they automatically look past the disappointing aspects of a product and rationalize that it’s actually good because XYZ. Saying Bethesda made a Bethesda game and people got a Bethesda game doesn’t really speak to the game itself. It dismisses the significant shortcomings of what fans of Bethesda games have come to appreciate and expect based on the great Bethesda games of the past. At the end of the day, the best aspects of any single-player game should always be gameplay and story first. Everything else should come secondary to those.

To your argument of people complaining about a lack of “Easy” mode in a Dark Souls game, well… that’s because it’s a Souls game. That’s literally what it was founded on and that is what fans of the franchise expect from it. They pride their fandom on it being something that’s exceedingly difficult to get through compared to most other games and they wear that achievement like a badge of honor. If Souls games started cheapening the experience and letting casuals have their day, the series would quickly lose it’s high regard with the veteran fanbase.

OK, but don’t you see how Bethesda keeps making concessions with every successive game they make?

How else are they going to buck that trend if gamers don’t wake up and say, “fool me twice, shame on me”?

To all the people saying, “eh, it’s not so bad”. How about we, as gamers, have some standards and stop giving developers who release games of ever backsliding quality any money or XBOX Game Pass (XBGP) billable hours so they can stop getting the reassurances that their downward trajectories are justified?

It’s not like games like Starfield and Diablo IV are the ONLY games out there FFS.

…

EDIT: To all the people crying out “what didn’t we get that Bethesda promised?”, I encourage you to watch this review:

https://youtu.be/tvo7fYOfMwc?si=vCsM17Mv9PtLoAcL

It’s done by a man who, despite all the game’s problems and unfulfilled promises (which he explicitly cites, I might add) still played 100+ hours and claims to have enjoyed it. However, that doesn’t prevent him from objectively evaluating the game for all its virtues and faults, which I appreciate from quality game reviewers. After watching this review, all my previous research findings and apprehensions about the game were confirmed and I have decided not to purchase it at this time.

Maybe the modding community or even Bethesda themselves will address some or all of these problems in the future, but until that time, I will choose to look to other horizons of entertainment. I wish that wasn’t the case with a AAA studio’s game, but sadly, that’s par for the course these days. Too many big-name titles released today are rushed-out, unfinished, barely-tested, buggy messes that people continue to pre-order, buy, or play on XBGP within the first week of their launch, which I reiterate, just lets developers know they can keep slacking on quality, still get paid, and someone in the wild will probably fix it for free (on PC, anyway).

9-5 is the old slang. It’s really more like 8-6 or 9-7 now.

Just one less hour to be a person. That’s all.

I’m afraid you just described everything that begins well, but eventually becomes popular. The more the general public engages with a thing, the shittier that thing becomes. Things that are not yet mainstream or become/remain private tend to have a lasting quality.

https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-retouching

I wonder if this is how God might feel.

Asking because I really have no clue, but what about using an AppleID / iCloud (@apple.com) email account with Mozilla Thunderbird for personal use?

Pros and cons? Whys and why nots?