Goldkin @Goldkin@awoo.space

@Felthry In effect, he gave himself too much confidence by having success in narrowly scoped wins in Georgia and Crimea (etc), financial corruption in the West, and a seeming sincere belief that his Soviet coercive model of rule is superior, and that support in Ukraine was Western influence, not sincerely held identity and a desire to not live under Russian occupation.

All a recipe for... a poorly reasoned, terrible war on Ukraine.

@Felthry This suspicion of the Western model as poisonous and in chronic decline is part of what influenced Putin to instead choose Soviet-style colonial expansion instead of globalized democratic rule. And it seems to be part of why he made such a mistake here in thinking his forces would be hailed as heroes and that Ukraine and the West would simply capitulate and roll over, after his experiences with using Trump and Congress as puppets.

@Felthry For the most part? Hesitancy and suspicion of the West after attempts to become a capitalist nation failed miserably, leading to Putin's rise in the first place. Which led to trade agreements with India and China in lieu of the West, while using the West primarily as a vehicle of laundering plundered wealth and assets for Putin's oligarchs and Putin himself.

@Felthry The main thing that it prevents is dividing and conquering European and Baltic states, by establishing that war on one state is war on all of them, and triggering defense pacts accordingly.

Which, a nation like Russia finds kind of terrifying, given Putin's isolating influence and colonialistic interests in former Soviet states. So he's been fighting deniable proxy wars to largely prevent their involvement... until now.

@Felthry ... decides to go all in, without any of the discipline, supply chain economic understanding, or wartime discipline necessary to do so, and this is the disaster that follows.

Re, NATO: this is extremely reductive, but consider it a defense alliance of necessity established to prevent a repeat of World War 2. Basically, it establishes a unified defensive bloc that ensures all of Europe will defend itself against a repeat of Hitler.

@Felthry (If you'd like sourcing on this lmk. I personally started researching this when trying to figure out why the hell 45 was blackmailing Zelenskyy at Putin's behest a few years ago.)

The odd part about this is it... may actually be that simple, because this is Putin's personal war, and he rules his country and inner circle through coercion. So small man who is an increasingly isolated sociopath, with wins carving out smaller territories...

@Felthry So a bit on the "why" here, because quite a few experts on this have been analyzing and speculating on this since long before the 2014 overthrow of Yanukovych. The two main drivers of Putin's personal ambitions with Ukraine appear to be his colonialistic desire to rebuild the Soviet state and to continue Russia's rule as a petrol state, both of which make Ukraine a particularly important target for him. A buffer to NATO is also a factor.

@qdot I know this is a shitpost, but since I've been calling Elden Ring a Disney theme park where everything wants to kill
you, and I now want an oddly specific Sim City/Themepark logistics manager to this concept.

@qdot ngl, my impression of Tunic is more positive in 3-5 hours than my impression of Elden Ring in 100+. >..>

@hystericempress Also good luck with the run!

@hystericempress (There is also a chain whip later in the game that may be of interest to this run. Not giving details so you can discover or wiki it as needed, but it's there, and it is amazing.)

@gardevoir Just watched the sub-one-hour (!) current record. Yeah, all of the checks are skippable, and only one major glitch is used to wrong-warp to an area early.

@gardevoir I've completed, and there's like... maybe one of those? But it's for a much later boss, and there's a bunch of places with teleporters and alternate routes that you can use to skip major content.

Kind of tempted to roll a new character and see what low% looks like. And if folks figure out how to skip certain triggers or barriers with like, the horse or something, it's going to be even more wild.

@kat Not my message, but unashamedly made exactly this joke somewhere later >..>

@Aradia Indeed. :p

@Aradia I guess it makes sense that it's specifically constructed challenges without much appeal to the plot, and the mechanics of combat and jolly coop are very polished. It's just weird to me to go through the motions of constructing an entire world, but to have it serve primarily as a funnel between encounters. Hence the Disney World analogy.

But I can't really argue against that being the intended experience or delivering well on it.

I mean, the game is good, I think? But this specific thing feels so completely alien to me somehow.

The weird thing about scaling up the Dark Souls model of "everything wants you dead" to a larger continent is it produces this weird uncanny valley in which absolutely nothing else is happening in the setting until you arrive.

No one is knitting, or writing, or just generally thinking about what to do with their long existence; they're just shambling along until you somehow happen to arrive, and their only response beyond brief snatches of dialog is to choose carefully practiced violence.

And I mean, that made sense when we're talking about a cursed undead kingdom in which everyone, including the castle guard, is slowly losing their sapience to carnal instincts subservient to a primal power. But in this setting, it... really does not make much sense, and it feels off in a significant way.

It's like going to Disney World, except all of the attractions specifically want to kill you, and your only agency in the experience is Y to talk or any other face button to violence. And even with playing most of the other games in the series to date, I find myself having trouble relating to this experience.