Thursday Next

Fragile delivery times do seem pretty tight, but I think distraction missions are worse. In theory, you're supposed to run to a specific group of baddies, get their attention and split to the next group. In reality, you have to run to an invisible checkpoint which is in the middle of where the baddies start out. The time is similarly miserly, however, you have the added challenge of getting to the cluster of enemies (in one case by climbing a pipe) and then have to sort of shuffle past them, if they don't start pushing you around. I had to reset so many times because the baddies spotted me early and blocked me from getting to the trigger point.

It is nice though that there is now a place for all those shouty people who "main Mcree", demand *you* play as Mercy and generally care way too much, to go so that everyone else can continue to have "fun".

I'm assuming the original not the adaptation of the "major motion picture". If so yeah, and despite missing the point itself, the original film of the book (Omega Man) was way better than the Will Smith film.

Kinda sorta beat Zero Time Dilemma (got one ending) but it totes doesn't count.

Currently playing Zero Time Dilemma. Love Spike Chunsoft games. They are aces. Plots are convoluted af though.

Can we please not do the line by line deconstruction thing? I find it rude. My point is that the face thing is obviously done by "some kind of magic", since they clearly aren't wearing actual masks a la Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I don't get why it matters to you which kind of magic it is exactly or that we see how Arya learns it. It's a kind of magic, it's done routinely in the place Arya has spent 2 seasons, she's even helped with the prep of the faces. We didn't see Arya learning to use a bow, but she made Bran look like chump with one in Episode 1, it's reasonable to assume that she picked up the skill hanging out in the castle where lots of people learn to work a bow even though Westerosi Ladies wouldn't normally get involved in that stuff, we don't need a scene where someone says "Oh look, there is Arya firing an arrow. I remember her learning to shoot the arrows with Bob Fletcher." we can just make the leap that she's a bit of a Tom boy and obviously got someone to help her practice or just practiced herself after watching other people. I could understand the strength of feeling if we left scared little Arya after Ned's beheading then jumped straight to stone cold killer master assassin Arya pulling off her face at the Twins with nothing in between, I could totally see that being a cause for "who the hell is this person, what the heck happened to her?" but it's taken six seasons to get here. I just think that it is odd as the mechanics of face changing don't bother me any more than knowing exactly How a dragon breathes fire: I mean what's the ignition source? Is it just a chemical reaction? Is it the same substance as wildfire? If so why isn't it more green?; How Dany can get Drogon, Viserion and Rhaegal to torch one particular ship just by saying "Dracarys"? Is it warging, mind control, telepathy, instinct?; or how Wights wake up, I mean they don't have obsidian daggers in them, and it seems they can operate either side of the wall. It's all just boffo. It doesn't matter to me how it works, it just does. All that said, you're not wrong for not liking it, or for having a problem with it, or feeling it spoils your suspension of disbelief or whatever. That's your personal take on it and I'm sure you aren't alone. I'd be interested to know more about how face changing works, but it doesn't piss me off remotely as much as it seems to do with you.

Arya used the face swap on Meryn Trant in season 5. She used it before the finale, why is everyone acting like the finale is the first time she did it?!?!

Then give me a basis for that (or any other) reasoning. Not you, the show. The show has not offered me that. On the contrary, all of the clues provided seem to lean more towards this being a cultivated technique rather than some sort of incantation or ritual (just as several of the clues also indicate that there is likely no belief in a mystical "Many-faced God" that the faceless order worships, only clients that tell them who to kill). At the very least a physical component seems to be involved, as they appear to take a great deal of time and care in the removal of faces from corpses. I can accept any combination of possibilities, but as of now I've only been shown that Arya hung around the House of Black and White for a while, and that now she can employ this highly exclusive technique whenever she feels like it without ever being taught how to do so. I'm not demanding an instruction manual for how to wear faces over here, though I would welcome it, and don't feel like it could possibly hurt the story. Being that one of the central characters, who we have followed intimately throughout the series, learned a mysterious technique that (as far as we know) was not taught to her directly while she was under the tutelage of the only people who know how to do it, I would appreciate some small explanation of how that went down. As I said earlier, even a 10 second shot of her witnessing some sort of vaguely depicted event would at least keep me at bay for a while if not shut me up altogether. Then I could say "Ok, it's a magic ritual that uses faces of the dead, and she learned it right under their noses by being sneaky." As it stands, since Arya is done with the Bravos leg of her arc, it just seems like there is some possibility that the Faceless order's defining skill is one that wasn't given very much consideration, and is just being swept under the rug once it's purpose is served because it would be awkward to deal with. Also this is not like those examples. Half of those amount to the question of the existence of the Lord of Light, which I personally believe will be addressed in some way or other by the end of the story, along with questions about the relationship between the Targaryens and dragons/fire, the relationship between the WW/zombies and dragonglass/obsidian, and the nature of the Three-Eyed Raven. I don't necessarily expect a detailed metaphysical explanation of any of it, but those are all core questions that the narrative proposes for the viewer, and that we can reasonably expect to be involved in the endgame. I'm not in Season 2 demanding an explanation of where the Whitewalkers came from. I'm not asking how the House of the Undying dude was able to make duplicates of himself either. It's one of the main characters undergoing an incredibly significant change with no explanation offered while we seem to know every other detail of her circumstances. Perhaps this explanation will present itself at a later time also, or at very least the reason for avoiding the details I'm asking about might become apparent when other events play out later. Maybe there will be a flashback. If that happens then it will make sense, and my skepticism will vanish. It's not sitting right at the moment though. I find this utterly bizarre. We know that GoT does magic. We know that faceless men can change their face through some sort of boojum. We know that Arya has spent a considerable amount of time training with them. We know that she has helped with the face removals. We can assume that she was taught face swapping at some point because she was given a mission to murder someone but she went off piste to shank Meryn Fucking Trant and Sexy Jesus knew all about it and was sort of not really ok with it. I don't get why you need to see something to get your immersion back. I prefer the element of mystery about it. The more I think about it, the more I think the hall of masks is a reference. It would be inconvenient to be caught with a bag full of faces.

Perhaps the iron born have been teaching them for weeks/months?

I agree with Ethan, the mechanics of face changing don't bother me in the least. It's some sort of sorcery. Perhaps the faces are in the hall not to be worn as masks, but so that you can copy them? You could in theory just focus on someone's face and copy it. The faceless men use the faces as a way of making sure the face they wear isn't the face of someone who (a) they recently killed and so shouldn't be seen strolling around or (b) they might bump into on the street. It's like a database of face. A dataface. As for teleporting, yeah, they could have gone with "several weeks later", or some calendar reference on screen, but it'd break immersion a bit. It's not like we're watching 24.

Aside from Dany, Gendry probably has the best claim. He's the eldest (assuming any other survivors) natural born son of King Robert Baratheon. Someone (perhaps a Warden of the [Compass Direction]) could legitimise him as Roose did to Ramsay and Stannis proposed to do with Jon.

It's a scutter!

Sweet. Cheers for sorting that Dean.

I agree a monthly sub would be easier for me. Otherwise, don't be shy about reminders. I'm always happy to chuck some money at this forum.

Nobody knows what's gonna happen. Currency is in the doldrums right now, might bounce back, might not. Companies with EU headquarters in England (Hi everyone!) might move to mainland Europe (shit!), or they might not (phew!).

I was being facetious about the shouting. Chill out dudes.

LevelCap says it very well fwiw.

So, while Dean and Ethan shout at each other on Twitter, I'm going to put down some thoughts here so we can have more reasoned discussion unrestrained by a 140 char limit. TinyBuild are seeing hundreds of thousands of $$$s worth of keys popping up on G2A. G2A says it doesn't check who is selling the keys, where they came form and is in no way responsible for the money that TinyBuild is losing (but they would be happy to buy keys for cheap from TinyBuild direct, undercutting TinyBuild's other partners who aren't screwing them over - how nice of them). A number of the keys sold by G2A do come from "legit" if somewhat "grey" sources, like people who buy bundles, and then sell on unwanted keys, however the number of keys being traded, coupled with the number of charge backs on fraudulent purchases TinyBuild are seeing clearly point to wholesale fraudulent credit card purchasing. Where I think G2A are being shady here is that unlike CEX and similar trade in outfits, G2A do nothing to verify a seller's identity, so someone can set up an anonymous account, sell a bunch of keys, cash out and disappear. G2A know (though they would never admit) that the keys are coming from questionable sources (otherwise how would an anonymous account (or several similar ones) turn up selling keys in small batches?), but G2A are happy to turn a blind eye as it is making them money. TinyBuild are trying to do right by their consumers, they don't have the team size to track and monitor where all their keys are going to because it is more cost efficient to create large batches rather than small trackable ones. This means that they can't deactivate suspect keys without also deactivating legit keys. Even if they could, it would seem harsh to cancel someone's key when they bought it from G2A in good faith. So there it is. I personally would avoid purchasing off of G2A for similar reasons to avoiding TeeChip. They are being willfully ignorant to dishonest, even criminal activity so that they can profit off of it and wash their hands of responsibility.

I'll probably get a Neo when it drops, I can trade in my PS4 against it, and it'll complement my PS VR purchase, and give me an excuse to get a 4K TV.

Never regretted a day one Sony purchase. Didn't buy the Vita on day one? Yup, and I still use it regularly. Platinummed Day of the Tentacle on it the other day in fact.

Never regretted a day one Sony purchase.

I would have guessed about 3 times as long as you have currently been playing...

If the solution is something that is fair (doesn't involve something arbitrary like punching in a button sequence on your controller), then I don't think it's ass. If it is completely arbitrary, like some FFXII open the wrong chest and you're fucked for getting the ultimate weapon thing, then yeah, it is ass.