Yeah, Breaking Bad is probably my favourite American tv serial too, tho maybe it’s a toss-up with True Detective S1.

Altho to be fair my friends have yelled at me for not having seen the Wire, dunno if I’ll ever get round to that lol

I don’t think the show is anti-communist.

I don’t think the show is explicitly pro-communist either, but it’s very very critical of American Exceptionalism. The entire point of the scene I described is to show how absurd the main character is for trying to do what she’s doing- she just immediately thinks that her way of seeing things is correct, without considering that other people might have other points of view and see the situation differently. (And the dramatic irony is that even the bloody hivemind gets that.)

And sure there’s a line about “being the worst mass murderer since Stalin”, but that line is coming out of the mouth of our American brain-wormed white-splaining main character, who is err… not portrayed as an authority on anything, really. Rather the opposite, like she’s Harry DuBois levels of complete fuck-up.

My interpretation of the show so far is that it is a character piece about how the average American would react to their society changing drastically (whether the societal change depicted in the show is an allegory for communism or A.I. singularity stuff that other commenters pointed out in this thread is kinda left to the viewer’s interpretation). It’s an examination of exactly how many of their fears of change are legitimate issues of identity and consent/rights, and how many are knee-jerk reactionary fears born from a lifetime of capitalist and American propaganda.

The show is not exactly kind to the average American, in my opinion.

I popped in the first episode just for this post-

The show seems to be an elaborate Thought Experiment in the vein of a lot of classic sci-fi: How would the average upper/middle class American react to their society transforming from an individualist one to a collectivist one overnight?

The POV character in the show isn’t exactly the most flattering portrayal of the average upper-class American, I’ll say that much.

Yeah, the hivemind is an old redscare sci-fi trope but I don’t know, the vibes I’m getting are that ol’ Vince “Breaking Bad” Gilligan isn’t exactly going weigh in on the side of American exceptionalism, but I could be wrong I only watched 1 episode.

Edit: I thought about it some more- If the hivemind is actually supposed to be villainous, there’s a queer reading where the hivemind could represent hetero-normative society attempting to stamp out what makes the main character (who is a lesbian) “different”. But I’d need to see more of the show to see how exactly it handles queer identity beyond what was introduced in the first episode.

Double edit: Ok made it thru episode 2 and the entire scene set on Air Force One of a white person explaining to a room of coloured people that they have to save the world, only to engender the response of “Wait what why? The world doesn’t need saving from this” is waaaaaaaaaay too on-the-nose there really isn’t any further room for discussion here.

The anime brics discourse will never not stop being hilarious to me

This one’s much better than the first one, although it’s also mostly focused on Argo Tulik and Dora Klindzic and how uniquely they got screwed over at Zaum post-initial interview, and then by 2 of the different successor studios after leaving Zaum.

It’s worth the watch, if for nothing else than for the summary of all the Disco “successors” and who owns what, and in how comprehensive (within reason) they get into the legalese surrounding all the various law suits.

Creatives get screwed over by C-Suite after Creatives make something profitable; subsequently C-Suite find new and more creative ways to exploit and screw over Creatives in a race to recapture the magic.

“Capital has the ability to subsume all critiques into itself. Even those who would critique capital end up reinforcing it instead.”

Based on what every content creator who got to try it hands on said, it’s missing that certain “je ne sais quoi” that something like say Hunt: Showdown has (basically a reason to pvp and not just rat mode all the time)

Shame it looks DOA since Marathon has really cool lore from the older games, a lot of which bungie reused for Halo

You can run trade routes for money, although what that amounts to is finding a route through a bunch of systems and then running through them buying low and selling high at each stop. The trade system is pretty barebones tho, nothing as deep as old Privateer or X games- economies are static and your actions don’t really affect the local markets.

Later on in the game you can get a capital ship and hire fleets of freighters to send out on expeditions, but mechanically it’s just a passive way to farm resources rather than a management sim mini-game.

If you’re looking for a game to just relax and chill it’s pretty alright at that.

I got bored after sinking a fair bit of time because once you get over the initial hump of just trying to survive (which doesn’t last very long, compared to other Minecraft style survival games) the game kinda becomes a “thing accumulation simulator”. Nowadays I usually just fire up the game after a couple of updates to see all the new stuff and then put the game away.

It’s very wide with a lot of things to do, but each thing isn’t particularly deep or rewarding e.g. keeping pets or running a trading fleet.

Imo the best way to play is to just go on a nice long search for a nice planet and then build a nice base on it to fulfill the power fantasy of owning a house, and that should probably occupy a good number of hours, but past that idk if the game will hold your attention because NMS lacks stardew’s life-sim gameplay.

I think that if Kurvitz, Hindperre and Rostov wanted another crack at telling a story in their world, I wouldn’t be opposed to it. But only if they’re the ones telling that story.

Check out Severance and Triangle Agency! (Or for video games Alan Wake 2 is basically overdosing on pure Twin Peaks)

I do agree though, it is a cool ass game, criticisms aside. I’m really excited to see what they do with Control 2.

All the pro-Automaton pro-Socialism propaganda is funny as fuck