IIRC, there were human survivors and hold-outs, but not many. Consequently, the vampire’s numbers were also rather small in turn. It was all a slow-moving apocalypse.

Really, it’s only just good enough of a backdrop for some really solid gameplay, set-pieces, and great voice-acting (well, for Soul Reaver anyway).

also the Empire had a space program

Easily one of the best unintentional “easter eggs” I’ve seen in a video game.

Meanwhile, in Legacy of Kain:

Vampires: Uh, boss? You corrupted the pillars of Nosgoth - which is great and all - but now the sun kinda/sorta doesn’t work anymore. It’s always dusk.

Kain: So what you’re saying is that we vampires can move around freely. All the time. Excellent.

Vampires: Won’t that eventually kill all the humans? Yanno, with no food and all?

Kain: ::shrugs:: Fuck 'em.

Of course not. You can’t monetize nature all that directly, so clearly it’s not “better”. /s

advertisers prove that they are absolute scumbags

I honestly didn’t believe that until, one day, a scumbag came calling with a ‘brilliant IT idea’ that only myself and my colleagues could build. I’ll put it this way: we realized that this guy would literally not stop until he covered the entire world with advertising, as though we were supposed to live in an environment modeled after a college dorm corkboard. No thanks.

On the home-gamer gameplay side, this is a solid list. On the technology side, I think there’s even more that makes sense for a curated museum tour. There were big leaps made in arcade tech through the 80’s and 90’s that were pushing all manner of graphics and sound, head-and-shoulders above the previous generation.

Sega’s “super scaler” boards come to mind, allowing for games like Hang-on, Outrun, and After Burner. Digitized sound samples started with Sinistar and Tempest. Dragon’s Lair amazed everyone with an interactive LaserDisc experience. There were also notable forays into AR with Time Traveler, and VR with Virutality. Lastly, we have the fully-enclosed and immersive cockpit of early Battletech simulators.

I have one of those.

It’s labeled “screw it.”

As long as it has a massive IKEA logo embossed (or with filigree) on there somewhere, you have my vote.

I think this is a crucial observation to understanding this whole mess.

Not everyone lives in a “heliocentric world”, where they’re just a small part of a bigger system, everyone is just multiple shades of different, and average/normal is statistical fiction.

To a lot of folks, their vantage point is: “people like me are normal and it’s everyone else that is on the deep left or right.”

Meanwhile they’re ready to metaphorically murder Copernicus because it’s too painful to admit that these political epicycles they’ve mapped out are masking the truth.

Glad you’re okay, Choom.

Whoa.

But there were also a handful of women ICE applicants and a lot of men of color. The deportation officer applicant pool was, I felt, shockingly diverse—one might say it looked like America.

People attempting to hide in the belly of the beast, perhaps? I wonder how that’s gonna work out.

As far as labors of love go, Stardew Valley is probably the most current example. People paid for this thing years ago, but Concerned Ape keeps adding new features anyway. The retro graphics give this thing a timeless quality out of the box, so it already looks “dated” - this hasn’t stopped the robust player community around it. We’ll probably see this game stay relevant for a long time.