Yeah, definitely hoping they consider bringing that to windows at some point, because it could be incredible. Obviously ultra-complicated, but it works unbelievably well on Series X. Being able to say, skip the loading of an emulator and hop directly back into the middle of a level in Demon Souls, jumping past all the logos and whatnot, would be amazing.

Man, I’ve been console for ages, but this January I bought a gaming PC and hooked it up as my dedicated console, and it’s been amazing. If you like a bit of tinkering, PC can dominate as a console.

• Playnite makes an amazing front end, stitching together everything my PC can do. Emulators, Steam, itch.io stuff, GoG and Epic and Xbox Game Pass, all seamlessly stitched together and 100% controller accessible.
• Emulators are fantastic, my PC plays Switch, PS3, Wii, everything.
• Real settings are a godsend, as is more powerful hardware. Actually play Elden Ring at a proper framerate. Play old games in true 4K/120.
• Tinker like crazy. Mods, ReShade, actual in-game settings, GPU Driver settings, if it bugs you, you can do something about it. Currently messing with emulating Demon Souls with ReShade, some mods, and connecting to RPCN for online multiplayer, and it’s a delight.
• More powerful hardware too. Great to be able to push games past console, in whatever way you prefer. I’m already planning a GPU upgrade to be able to do more.
• Heck, even sharing features. My GPU can save 5 minutes or more of instant replay clips, which I used to save all of my Elden Ring boss fights, just hitting a controller shortcut when I killed the boss. My PC shares those via FTP, so I can just grab those on my phone and upload them to YouTube. Faster than Xbox uploads, and actually my files, with no arbitrary storage cutoff like I hit on Xbox.

Basically the only thing I miss is Xbox’s Quick Resume, or suspending a game on Switch. But a good PC fires up games fast, so it’s really not a huge loss in the face of all the benefits.

Mostly art things. I’m far from qualified to speak to it as an expert, I haven’t played either version yet, but have friends who are very passionate about the topic.

I think the easiest way to explain it is to refer to this Miyazaki quote:

Most people don’t believe me when I say this, but a certain kind of refinement, elegance, and dignity are very important to me. I’ll usually tell the designers that flat-out grotesque or splatter type designs will not get past me. This has everything to do with my own personal sensibilities, and it is something that I apply to every design that I approve.

Even if you just look at the tutorial boss (I clipped a a YT side-by-side for you here), the changes they’ve made here to add detail are basically all… grotesque. Gross hanging flesh, some weird hanging nipple thing, it’s a very different interpretation of the original than what I believe was intended.

This is obviously just one example, but it’s this type of change that bothers purists. Now, mind you, I don’t think this makes the remake trash or anything, but if you’re interested in Demon Souls historically as the beginning of the Souls franchise, this kind of change is essentially revisionist history, and it’s disappointing to me that the original game isn’t also available in some way besides buying an old PS3 or emulating the game.

100%. I’m also honestly a bit worried about any remaster they may announce. Bluepoint did a wonderful job in many areas with Demon Souls, but there were definitely some “enhancements” that didn’t exactly match the authorial intent of the original.

Ideal world, I’d love both, good access to a high quality original, and a top-tier remaster of a classic.

Fortunately ShadPS4 looks to be saving the day here, by giving us the ability to emulate the original with patches to fix the glaring issues. Still sucks if you’re sitting there on PlayStation though.

All that said, I don’t expect anyone to touch the original officially. From Soft have moved on, and Sony holds the publishing rights. If BluePoint isn’t interested, it’ll continue to be the elephant in the room.

Eh, it’s because of what Bloodborne is, and the state of it. Improper frame pacing with a 30FPS cap, even if you bought a new PS5 to play it (because it’s not available on PS4).

A cleaned up patch for newer gen hardware to unlock it would be enough, but a remaster is more likely to appeal to Sony.

30% / 0% / 70%

Yeah, this is the problem with frankensteining two systems together. Giving an LLM a prompt, and giving it a module that can interpret images for it, leads to this.

The image parser goes “a crossword, with the following hints”, when what the AI needs to do the job is an actual understanding of the grid. If one singular system understood both images and text, it could hypothetically understand the task well enough to fetch the information it needed from the image. But LLMs aren’t really an approach to any true “intelligence”, so they’ll forever be unable to do that as one piece.

Ah, he recommends saving 1000$, then tackling your debt, then building to 3-6 months expenses. Which is… fine, I agree with the principle of it, but that number is definitely one of those things I’d consider being more flexible with. The amount I think you should save before tackling your debts depends on a lot of factors.

I also don’t necessarily agree with saving that amount in two blocks, we personally saved 1000$, paid the most pressing card off, and then saved another 1000$. I think it makes sense to adjust that minimum emergency fund number as your situation evolves.

Just another case where I find he works fine as a starting point, but where most people shouldn’t follow his advice to the letter.

Mmm, excellent addendum to my proposed changes. 1000$ is better than nothing, but it hasn’t really kept up with inflation, and circumstances really change things. For example, if you have a house, the potential opportunity and cost of an “emergency” goes up immensely.

But yeah, for us personally we pretty quickly went up to a 2000$ emergency fund, despite the relative stability of renting and driving a fairly new car. We’ll be working on our 3-6 month expense emergency fund soon. I definitely think it’s better to view the baby steps as flexible guidance on a starting point, rather than the concrete law they frame it as.

I think I have an interesting perspective here, as someone who did kinda get their finances under control thanks to a Dave Ramsey course, and later had the unpleasant experience of discovering how much of a right-wing idiot he is during COVID.

Something I’ve noticed is that a lot of his advice seems targeted towards people who are crushingly bad at navigating debt. One of the most viral things they do is called “the debt free scream”, where people share their stories on his radio show after getting debt free, and just… do a victory scream, essentially. Kinda fun, not really a bad thing, but it shows how most of the people he deals with directly and the ones that make the best marketing are people with hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars of debt despite making very average money. Just absolutely no self-preservation instinct around available credit.

And for these people I think his advice makes sense. Absolutely no debt, debt is the enemy, it will crush you. And stuff like how he pushes you to chase paying debt with high intensity, get multiple jobs, etc. Because otherwise it’s impossible to even manage to put money on the principle of a debt that large.

For the average person though? His best advice is basic budgeting, focusing on paying your debts one by one so you can celebrate each victory quickly, and building an emergency fund so you don’t need to go backwards as soon as you have a car problem. Also, yeah, ditch the brand new truck, it’s burying you in debt you didn’t need.

But absolutely, I’d highly recommend modifying his recommendations for most people, and I don’t doubt someone out there is doing a better job of teaching this stuff than Ramsey is. My advised tweaks:

• Find a budget you can live with, paying your debts a couple months faster isn’t worth being miserable, and makes it more likely you’ll be able to stick to a budget for as long as it takes.
• Zero-based budgeting (budgeting every dollar at the start of the month) isn’t really necessary, leaving a little loose change that you can allocate later once the month is actually happening is pretty helpful. It’s ok to shift things around so long as you aren’t spending money you don’t have.
• Actually do keep “fun money” or “restaurant money”, so long as you’re capable of including it in the budget without hamstringing your ability to pay debt. If you’re giving more to debt than these things, then you’re probably fine.
• Ultimately just… think for yourself, and make your own decisions, based on your own income and expenses. Ramsey is a decent, if aggressive, starting point (and again, not the best person, he seems to have lost the plot somewhere).