It's very long if you take the time to explore the whole map and do all the side quests, but the main quest is leveled so that you don't have to do most of the side quests if you don't want to, unlike some games where you kind of have to do most of the side quests in order to level up enough to keep up with the required level for the main quest. If you do choose to side quest you can be way overpowered and breeze through the main quest line with no problem.

I'm working on a playthrough right now and I'm less than halfway through and I've only done maybe 1/3 or less of the side quests so far and I'm already 7 levels above where the main quest wants me to be.

I think it's worth it because I love the world, the characters, and the story, but every nerd has their special fandom and the Witcher is mine.

This is my favorite game ever, I'm sorry you're finding it boring and slow paced. There's so many little things to discover. I have more hours and more playthroughs into it than I'd like to admit.

That poor child. What a long, painful death just because their parents couldn't be bothered to not be pieces of shits. You can choose whatever you want for yourself, but when you have another life dependent on you then you have to do whatever is necessary to limit their suffering.

When I was a child my mother told me that I had no rights as a human being except the ones she decided I should have until I was a legal adult and could move out of her house.

I haven't spoken to her in years.

As a woman, seriously, just give me the bro nod to acknowledge that I exist but am not that interesting to you and keep walking. If you go out of your way to show that you aren't a threat now I'm thinking you're a threat, and if you pointedly ignore me now I'm wondering if you are actually far more interested in me than you should be but you want me not to notice.

Brief eye contact while acknowledging that I exist tells me you aren't afraid of me remembering your face but that you aren't being weird and staring or trying to hide from me.

"I just want to go hug my cat right now"

See maybe it's my part of the world, but I've always seen guys use an up nod as sort of a "yo, 'sup fellow human" , and a down nod as a "hello there". The up nod just has a subtly more chill bro feel to it, but either is fine lol.

Now I need to go poll some guys.

If I had one wish, it would be that they could live as long as us. I'm sorry for your loss

Honestly, here's the thing. My PC is still running Win10. It just works. My life is stressful and chaotic and my escape is gaming. I love modded Skyrim and I love gaming and when I get a chance to sit down at my computer I just want to fucking escape. I don't want to troubleshoot, I don't want to fiddle, I just want to load my game and have fun.

That is what has been keeping me from switching to Linux these past few years. I have Win10 tweaked in the registry so it can't run copilot or AI, the start menu can't connect to the Internet so it can't show me ads, it's still Microsoft and I don't love it but I don't have to think about it.

If someone came along and said hey, for $100 I'll install Linux on your computer, make sure all your drivers are installed, make sure all your hardware works, and get your games and files moved over, tested and working, and be around to troubleshoot in the future and teach you basic troubleshooting if you need me (for an additional reasonable fee), I'd pay it. I'm not made of money, but I don't want to spend my time or limited brain power doing that stuff and I'd be more than happy to offload it to someone else.

Your Control screenshots all look like you've taken actual photos of a bunch of minis in lovingly created dioramas. I'm not sure what it is that is so different from other games that look like either plain screenshots or actual hyper realistic photos of life sized people, but all of these just look like incredibly detailed miniatures to me. I played a little bit of Control and I don't remember the game having that effect while playing.

It's lovely and interesting and I'm curious if anyone else sees it too.

I'd happily pay that if it allowed me to not have to deal with it.

I'm not a technological idiot, it's just not my thing and I find it very stressful to deal with. It would be worth it to me to not have to.

Well at least the good thing is I will never pass my genes along to anyone else. The awkwardness ends here :)

I had heard it was an issue in Linux. I'm running Lost Legacy and Yggdrasil (Skyrim VR) which are both 100+ gb mod packs (and highly recommend them both, Lost Legacy is breathtakingly beautiful). Lost Legacy is also very stable and runs very smoothly, especially compared to some of the other pre built mod packs I've tried.

If I did get brave and make the switch, is this something that theoretically could be run in a Windows VM or would it be better to dual boot and keep Windows hanging around for Skyrim?

I got laughed at and called paranoid and alarmist before Trump was re-elected when I talked about project 2025 and how terrifying it was.

One day in the summer before the election I had an interaction at work with a member of the public. An older white gentleman from a conservative area that has a lot of racists. He started talking to me and bringing the conversation around to politics, and I was mentally bracing myself to grit my teeth and remain professional. He told me how he was a lifelong Christian and then he surprised the living fuck out of me. He actually teared up and asked if I had heard of Project 2025. When I told him I had he said that it scared him so badly, that they were laying out how they wanted to oppress and kill his fellow Americans just because they were different and he was terrified that it was going to be enacted and that he didn't believe in any of that and wanted to stand up against it and would not vote for it.

I think about him every once in awhile and wish we had more people like him in this country.

You know, everyone who I personally know who passionately argues that if you give people free money they won't do any work has been a stay at home mom.

Stay at home moms get "free" money from the spouse who goes to work and supports them.

I would also argue that stay at home moms work harder than a lot of us who have full time jobs. I get to leave work and mentally check out, they're "at work" all the time.

Someone should point this out to the people who make this argument.

I wish being awkward was genetic, because then awkward people would have been unable to get mates and therefore been bred out of the gene pool thousands of years ago and I wouldn't have to exist just to lay awake at night alone and unloved remembering all my cringiest social moments

If I ever have a long lost relative die and leave me a mysterious fortune I will hire you as my chef. Your posts always make me hungry and I despise cooking.

If you've never heard it before, look up the song Gold Rush by Death Cab for Cutie. It's about losing places that are tied to memories.

The apartment complex where I live is posted no soliciting. Management heavily encourages people to call the police if solicitors ignore the sign. Even more shocking, the police will actually come and throw solicitors off the property if they're contacted. (This is also the same police department that tracked down and got an arrest warrant for the random stranger who broke into my car the day after it happened)

The average person only lived to be 35 back in the day.

No, the average lifespan was like 35 back in the day. 40 year olds weren't some rare wrinkled old person, the average was affected by the extremely high childhood mortality. If you could survive the first few years of your life your chances of surviving the next 60 were pretty good.

For people who might not be in the US and don't understand why this is a bad idea in the US and proportionately hurts poor people, proof of citizenship is usually a passport. A passport costs $130. You need supporting documents like your birth certificate, SSN, and a drivers license/state ID to get it. For your first passport you usually have to make an appointment to go somewhere authorized like a library, post office, or courthouse to apply, and then they send the application off and it can take weeks to months to get back, depending how backed up the processing agency is (and I'm sure there will be artificial delays during voting years if this passes). Also, they are passing laws limiting where you can go to apply, so now libraries and the post office are losing the ability to process passport applications, so people will have to go to the county courthouse, which could be a long drive from where they live, especially if you live in a rural area. For people who don't drive, or only have one car that is shared with another working adult, or use public transportation that has a limited range (or just doesn't exist in most of the US), or are disabled and can't travel far, this can be a huge problem.

Also, all these places are only open during normal business hours, so you probably have to take time off work to go apply. Federal minimum wage is only $7.25/hr while the living wage is actually much higher (living wage for 1 adult living alone in a 1 bedroom apartment where I live was considered almost $23/hr in 2024), and if someone is making minimum wage or close to it they almost certainly aren't getting paid time off, so now they have to come up with $130 for the fee and lose time off work.