I really hope they improve gamepad support, the lack of it makes it not particularly playable on Android handheldds which is a shame since it runs way better than Minecraft onnsaid platforms

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My conspiratorial side has a slight inclination to believe that EA threw their weight around behind the scenes to prevent this release.

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While government intervention is undesirable and messy, it may be necessary. I'm reminded of the workplace. Rules in the workplace are created in response to someone causing an issue in a way that was unforseen until them, it's more desirable for employees to just be mature and smart enough not to cause the issues, but... Well, you know how it is.
I think it's just common sense that if some online service is required to make the physical product you bought work, than that service, or some workaround for said service, should always be available even if the company behind said product shuts down. It's important for historical preservation, and it's responsible for us to keep things out of landfills whenever possible.

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The Pacific Northwest has always been a favorite region to explore IRL. Just a wide variety of natural terrain, drive half an hour in any direction and you'll feel like you're in a different state all together.
Perfect place for an exploration focused game really, I'll certainly look into this title.

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Always appreciated what Black Mesa did. I mean I never got to play Half Life 1 when it was in its prime, I had an N64 and a barely usable prebuilt HP running Windows ME when it came out. By the time Half Life was on my radar it was a hard game to get into. I prefer the original nowadays, but without Black Mesa to show me the design and artistic intent behind those dated graphics and mildly jank mechanics... I'm not sure if I'd ever have beaten HL1 and be quite as big of a Half Life fan as I am now.
Actually, nevermind, Fallout 1 & 2 never got remakes and I managed to power through their jank and become a toxic Fallout fan, and those games are intensely more dated. If Black Mesa got delayed even longer I probably would a got tired of waiting and just powered through HL1 and be just as much of a fan as I am now. In any case, Black Mesa was cool and Mark Laidlaw is a good writer and aside from his work on Half-Life I really liked his book Dad's Nuke.

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I didn't expect this to blow up like it has, but I was also rather uninformed as to how... Well, disappointing recent Pokemon games have been. Game Freak and Nintendo have the financial resources to make an awe inspiring entry in the franchise, but they pump out stuff that barely passes as GameCube launch titles visually, and the core gameplay doesn't seem to have changed a lick since the Game Boy days.

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It'd be nice if on initial setup they gave you the option to disable all explainers. It's nice for new users, but returning users, like if they release a Deck 2 which I will certainly buy, it'll all just be unnecessary.

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Lack of Windows license seems to have positively affected the pricing, $299 is... Pretty darn good for a PC handheld. When accounting for inflation its pretty close to the price of the DS when that launched.

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Quoting: TimeFreezeWondering if the GOG version will also get those improvements besides the Creation stuff since thats removed anyways in the GOG release.

I doubt they'll give the GOG version any Deck specific updates, seeing as how it's not expected to be installed on that devoce through said platform, but man it'd be great if they did. Gog version is kinda... Well, it took ages to get it working flawlessly on the Deck. Heroic doesn't install it properly and lead to the launcher not working properly due to missing or misformatted registry keys (intentional bit of copy protection on Bethesda's part which has always annoyed me). And when you get past that, a windows component needs to be installed via protontricks to get dialogue audio working whick took a bit of digging to figure that issue out.
Point is, almost wish I bought the Steam version, on the other hand I really don't want creation club nonsense polluting my game, and DRM free is always preferred when given the option .

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Perhaps if projects like Box86 improve, they can make a Deck lite running off ARM. Something smaller, passively cooled, super battery life, focused on being a handheld Steam Link but fully capable of playing PC games from at least the 2010s.
That's under the assumption ARM is more power efficient than modern x86_64 processors, not sure if that's actually true anymore I haven't really looked into the subject much and AMD really seems to be absolutely killing it in the erea of power efficiency
I anticipate the Deck will become at least 5 years old before they really start considering a full on Deck 2 in any case.

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