u/Inevitable_Coat_8787

I've played 17 hours of it during the free week. And the game oozes personality, style, aesthetics and interesting gameplay mechanics. The art direction is bold and the sound design is just 10/10. The lore and the presentation is just so nice.

The maps are filled with a variety of enemy encounters, traps, and events that players can trigger.The ai is pretty damn impressive. They patroll and defend key locations and know how to flank, take cover, and behave in unpredictable ways that it feels refreshing. Gunplay feels like orgasm. Player interactions feels so fun. Completing missions with a team, creates fun decision making for each run, since you gotta negotiate and prioritize which mission to do in which order. And the mission types can really affect your playstyles. And because each player in the run has a different mission, it creates cool type of randomness to the game that just got me hooked. The whole gameplay loop feels damn good.

I'm pretty damn sure Marathon was just released during an incredibly bad launch window which made it harder for the game to find an audience. It is a very solid game, but it was and maybe still is held back by the negative reception and the cultural climate surrounding its release. I'm also pretty damn sure that the release of Highguard and Concord, and general negativity towards the direction of gaming industry, that has been building up (maybe justifiably), was the reason why the initial reaction to the game was so negative.

But damn holy shit. That's a lot of gassing.

Edit: This post discusses modern tribalism and binary thinking, and how it slowly kills nuanced discussion by turning every opinion into a forced ideological side-picking game. At some point, people stop thinking altogether and just be socially optimized NPCs who are terrified of independent thought. My main claim: The current cultural climate doesn’t really allow for actual free thinkers.

I hate interacting with people. People are shit in general. Every time I try to talk to someone or be real for a second, they interpret everything I say as a personal attack or an attack on their worldview. I was having this discussion with my friend about something, and instead of even trying to see where I was coming from, he took it incredibly personally. Sounds familiar?

Which brings me to my next point: the culture is shit. People are incredibly self-centered these days and I think the social media is responsible for that. I was born in the 90s and saw the rise of the internet. Back then people at least pretended to care. But modern life is a fucking mental prison. Everything produced now has to fit some predetermined format. The algorithm pushes and rewards controversy, shallow behavior, outrage, and content made in a very specific format, which by itself limits what kind of culture is even allowed to survive. The current system mainly rewards garbage that turns people into shallow dickheads who are chasing likes, virality, and some hollow status game while normal human thought gets buried under piles of shit. Nuance, honesty, and originality doesn't matter and they always lose against tribalism, rhetorical dominance, and outrage. And don't get me started about tribalism.

Everything have to be split into 2 camps. Men vs Women. Artists vs. Coders. Republicans vs Democrats. Liberals vs Conservatives. Ideology x vs. ideology y. This type of thinking itself creates a fallacy. Opinions about certain subjects can only exist between a narrow predefined positions. But the thing is, reality does not operate like a dialogue tree with only two options. Sometimes both """sides""" are missing the point entirely. Sometimes the whole framing itself is wrong. Sometimes the truth exists outside the categories that are being offered. The conversation is controlled not by censorship in the traditional sense, but by conceptual limitation. Certain thoughts feel “unthinkable” not because they were disproven, but because the structure of the conversation never allowed them to emerge in the first place. My point is that binary thinking only allows for a limited range of conclusions, because the positions you’re allowed to hold on a subject become artificially restricted. But the worst part is that this kind of mentality seeps into the real world, and the trend is not changing.

If you’re not with me, you’re against me. If you think x, then apparently you also have to agree with y and z. Binary thinking doesn’t allow people to hold beliefs that contradict their camp’s orthodoxy. And this in turn makes people incredibly hostile toward you even when your intention isn’t to insult anyone. What depressed me the most is, people allways assume the worst about you if you don't align with someone's world view 100%. The premise and meaning of culture and conversation has changed so drastically, you can't have a normal conversation without it turning into a debate where retorical dominance means more than exploring different perspectives. Your opinion does not have any value if it doesn't "win" an argument or go viral. And people ALWAYS seem to assume conversations to be adversial, rather than an attempt to understand each other.

My point is that the current cultural climate doesn’t really allow for actual free thinkers. On top of that it often rewards shitty behavior and values dominance and tribalism over harmony and understanding. I’m fucking tired of all of it. Lately I’ve been thinking about killing myself because of how trapped and disconnected everything and everyone are from each other. This whole thing feels like a god damn mental prison.

So yeah. They basically dumped a pile of random documents online. They heavily redacted key sections and blacked out the names of Epstein’s associates, deleted some files all together, and provided almost no explanation or guidance on how to interpret the material.

It infuriates me how fucking corrupted the whole government is. It's obvious it is covering up for the perpetrators and what is worst is that people now are incredibly divided over some petty culture war. One of the largest elite-connected abuse scandals in modern history somehow dissolves into noise.

The whole fucking thing creates the impression that the elite knows exactly how to manage public attention. They just release enough information to create the illusion of transparency but do it in such a chaotic and fragmented way that the average person cannot meaningfully process it. Then let the internet tear itself apart arguing over side issues while the core questions remain unanswered.

At minimum people expected clarity, accountability and a serious attempt at public transparency.

I'm so fucking done.

So here goes:

I'm thinking about finally playing Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 Enhanced Edition before going into BG3. However, I’ve heard some people say the EE versions changed or replaced parts of the original writing/dialogue, and that some of the original portraits/art style had a different vibe that people preferred more.

What I’m basically asking is: Are there any mods or modpacks the community generally recommends for bringing back more of the original atmosphere/vibe while still keeping the Enhanced Edition QoL improvements and modern compatibility? Edit3: Or is it totally fine to just play Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 Enhanced Edition and still get most of the original feel/vibe?

(The main reason I’m leaning toward EE is purely for the quality of life improvements and smoother experience on modern systems. But at the same time, I’d still like to experience the games as authentically as possible in terms of art direction, portraits, tone, UI feel, etc.)

So ideally: modernized system, original vibe/art style

Any recommendations? Thanks for advance.

Noticed that I have both BG 1 and 2 Enhanced Edition on steam.

Edit1:

Clarification: I'm not making an argument whether or not the original or EE is better or worse. This thread is not about that. I'm just trying to relive gaming history in modernized package if that makes any sense...

...That said, I did bring popcorn in case the fans start fighting each other. 🍿

Edit 2:

I did not expect asking about mods and original art to start a civil war. But here we are.

Imagine a door man ult. But, instead of a hotel corridor, your character gets trapped in a dimly lit corporate void. Discord closes. Music fades out. Every time you try to tab out, the game pauses and displays: “Escape unavailable until employment status improves.”

I think one of the reasons depression is so prevalent is that we were sold a vision of the world that doesn’t actually exist. When we realize how harsh or disappointing reality is, it's just become too much to cope.

It feels like society is built around a constant status game, a race that never really ends. And it’s exhausting. Realizing that we’re only here for a limited time, maybe less than 100 years, and the die. And it's all for nothing.

I just hate it all..