If the Internet has taught me anything, they’re 42 and 69.

And if you kept pressing it, it would tell you off. Back when even installers had more soul than their games do now.

Opinions will differ, but generally people really like the first and/or third. The second was rushed, and it shows, mostly by a ton of reused assets and locations.

The first is more loved by hardcore or oldschool RPG fans. The third is more action oriented, generally a lot more colourful, and very much larger. Its combat is generally liked more than the first (except, again, by CRPG fans).

All three have memorable characters.

You can save and stop playing whenever.

The world is dark - especially in the first game. There is slavery, racism, demons, and a few even darker topics. There are optional sex scenes, but they’re rather clean. One of the demon models is rather skimpy. But in the third game you can pick your time in the game while kids are watching to be mostly fun with bright colours and some fantasy fighting. That might be harder in the first.

There are similarities with Mass Effect, but they do play very differently. The dialog system is very similar in 2 and 3, as are the companion interactions in all three.

So it is indeed greener where you water. Try the body thing next and let us know.

I recently finished Mass Effect Legendary, a very nice experience. I’m now starting Andromeda and so far I’m enjoying it a lot. The game is gorgeous! Its flaws may start showing later, but for now it’s great - and it’s not like the other ME games don’t have flaws.

It may work for a subset of the Dragon Age fans, but the old school DA:O CRPG fans are left to look elsewhere.

I miss Windows phone, still the most intuitive phone UI I’ve ever seen.

There’s an old but IMO still very relevant white paper by Microsoft titled “So Long, And No Thanks for the Externalities: The Rational Rejection of Security Advice by Users”. It argues that security measures often cost more in employee time (and hence wages) than the potential benefit. It’s an interesting read and I think about it whenever our chief of security cooked up with another asinine security measure.

You got a lot of great recommendations already, but I want to add one more indie game: Lost Words Beyond the Page. Gameplay is simple and it’s not very long, but the writing is excellent.

You should be aware that “maintaining” that PC may be more than you expect. Just this weekend I had to help my aunt because the bank’s website had a “big thing in front of it” that she couldn’t get rid of. It turned out to be a cookie banner that was just a bit too big for her laptop screen, and the buttons to close it were out of the frame.

That’s just an example of course, but depending on the person(s) using it, there may need to be someone at hand to help at all times.

This is the same kind of fear mongering that Orbán has been spouting in Hungary. Tusk may be in a different place on the political spectrum, but here at least he’s using the same techniques.

Yes you should go vote, but not under the threat of war.

Don’t worry, DRM-ed content isn’t recorded, so big companies’ IP is protected.

I tried, but it always comes up with pictures of airplanes for some reason.

Origami.

Gothic 1 is my all time favourite RPG. 2 is everything a sequel “should” be: bigger, some mechanics improvements without losing the core, and (with the expansion) callbacks to 1 and familiar characters. And yet it also lost some of the atmosphere. This is why 1 will always be my favourite.

Despite that, it’s still a great game, and many people’s favourite. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

You should really ask the same question - or its inverse - in a conservative forum. If you only ask it here, you’ll get a very skewed answer.

And to be honest, the question itself and the wording shows your bias as well. Whenever something about US politics is posted on Lemmy, there are always comments about how “they” are hate-filled people, how “they” are projecting, how “they” want to rape children. It’s a different expression of that hatred, but it is the same hatred.

But that’s exactly their point: it it’s legal for them to bug your house when all prerequisites are met. That last part is very important. Without voicing my opinion: that is the current law in many western democracies.

End-to-end encryption means that even with very stringent limitations, they would never be able to listen in. None of the previous spaces “beyond their reach” has been that.

And BTW as far as I know churches have never been this, legally. There was a time when you could find asylum in a church, and you couldn’t be arrested, but they were never barred from law enforcement listening in.

And, for the record, this part is my opinion: end-to-end encryption should be possible, and without backdoors.

I started playing through the series a few years ago, having never played them before (I finished Origins a while ago and am now on a break).

AC2 is quite playable still - in fact all of them are. But there are some things that I would’ve liked to know beforehand.

The keyboard and mouse controls are bad. Unity is the worst here: I’d try to run from an enemy and suddenly the character would decide to jump onto a fountain and run around on top of it. AC2 has less of this, but the parkour can feel clunky.

There are too many collectibles, and they all get icons on the map. It’s hard to ignore these, but in trying to collect everything I started to resent the games. To a lesser extent, the same is true for trying to get perfect scores on missions, or doing all side content. The problem is that some of the side content is actually good, but some is just filler and you can’t really know in advance.

Something that bothered me a lot: often you’d get a new mechanic thrown at you looong before the main story introduced that mechanic.

Overall my advice is to play the game - and others in the series - by picking and choosing what you want to do, not by trying to do or see everything.

I’m going through Mass Effect 3 now. When I started the series I thought it seemed good, but I didn’t really understand why it was so very popular. And then the story picked up, and I understood.

Then the opening scene of 2 came, and that was amazing. What a way to start a sequel.

Now in 3 I feel like they nailed the atmosphere. I can’t wait to see where the story goes.