Honest question: Why would you want a remake/remaster when the original can be played almost anywhere thanks to emulators? Is it just the legal acquisition of the game, or would you want to see some improvements to the game?

It depends on the jurisdiction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property_protection_of_typefaces

I’ve heard that Shadows is one of the better Assassin’s Creeds, but 100%-ing it still sounds like hell. There’s just too much to do in Ubisoft openworlds.

I like that the companion seems to be more talkative.

The first planet kinda drags on. The games gets slightly better after that. One of the DLC is quite good.

I like that you show GUI apps alongside the terminal. Often I see a cool setup where someone just changes the wallpaper and the colour scheme of the terminal.

Mine’s really simple; I just make the path bold and yellow:

What I like to do is change the colour depending on the machine I ssh into, e.g. make the path red on my Raspberry Pi.

To open an app launcher press Win+D, then type the name of a program you want to launch and press enter. Boom, you’re using Sway. Here are the default key bindings: https://wiki.garudalinux.org/en/sway-cheatsheet

I’ve actually heard of The Precursors before. It was featured in Tehsnakerer’s Playing series. I don’t know what my tolerance of slavjank is. I’ve played Operation Flashpoint a lot when I was a kid. Does that qualify as slavjank?

What about it being a janky MMO takes it away from being your ideal game though?

Quite a bit, I think. It being an MMO has some practical consequences, namely the fact that I can’t play it offline and the monetization of the game. It also influences the game mechanics: For example, STO’s combat uses tabbed targeting¹. I like tabbed targeting² but I don’t think it’s the peak of combat systems; a different combat system could/would make the game more engaging and enjoyable.

I can look at the individual parts of the game. There STO shines. But when I look at STO as a one compact package, it doesn’t.

¹ It also has a shooter mode but I remember it being janky as hell.

² I’d actually love to see a sort of “offline MMO” which would use tabbed targeting.

Ostranauts looks cool as heck! I’ve added it to my wishlist.

Yeah. It had a bad launch. I wish we had gotten the expansion about the Quarian ark.

I often see Star Control 2 mentioned as an inspiration for Mass Effect. How does Star Control compare to Mass Effect? Is there a set story or is it more of an emergent narrative?

Yeah, I’ve heard that it’s a great immersive sim. I wouldn’t call it a big space game™.

Faster Than Light’s my jam! For me, it was dethroned from the throne of roguelite games by Slay the Spire.

Starbound was the first and last game I pre-ordered. I wish they would have stuck to the original vision with the survival mechanics. Thinking about it, Starbound is basically a proto-Starfield. The both promised an experience based on a different game (Terraria in space vs. Skyrim in space) that was undercut by the overuse of procedural generation. (Someone please create an 8 hour video essay about this.)

I have Elite Dangerous on Steam. I have 8 hours of playtime. Alas, without a story to hook me in, space trucking is not for me. :(

I’d say it was a solid 7/10. One of the DLCs (Peril on Gorgon I think) is better than the base game, I’ve heard.

On a good day, Starfield’s a 5/10 in my eyes.

In this genre of “big space games”, The Outer Worlds stands near to Mass effect, because it follows “the Bioware formula” pretty closely: The player and a group of followers visit several semi-open worlds, where they look for a MacGuffin related to the main story while solving local problems. (I’ll write a short essay about the Bioware formula someday…)

The Outer Worlds was a good game (not great) and I look forward to the sequel. I’ve played most Obsidian games and I wish they wrote more sci-fi.

I’ll check out all three of them!

Cowboys in space is not my favourite trope, but I’ve heard good things about the first Rebel Galaxy. How was the switch from 2D combat to 3D combat in the sequel? (And is the story any good?)

I enjoy your optimism. I hope we see Squadron 42 soon and I hope it’s good. (The shitstorm if it isn’t would be huge!)