Ares42

@aegon: I re-watched some of the earlier battles in the series after writing my last post and what you're talking about is exactly how the former (much better) battles have been. They have been focused on one or maybe two characters, and they've been about them having a pivotal character moment. In some ways I thought the battle in this episode almost seemed focused on developing the Night King, but then it turned out there was no character there at all. I guess in the end it's supposed to be Aryas battle, but basically every scene with her in it felt misplaced and shoehorned in.

@nutter: I didn't really have as much of a problem with darkness rather than blurryness. Any scene involving the storm was just a mess which was like half the episode. It probably didn't help that the episode itself was pretty messy as well. The introduction to the battle was on the right track, but then due to having way too many "important" characters involved it became a mess of "hey, look at this guy fighting". It was just jumping around all over the place without really showing where things are happening or what's going on.

The editing of that video though....

@sethmode: It is, but the people up top don't care. Videogames is basically a gold rush industry at the moment. The people funding it are just squeezing out all the profit they can while the boom lasts and don't give a shit about the health of the industry. Once the bubble pops for real (and not just a small burst like last year) they will move on to greener pastures.

I believe the AC3 remaster was part of some Odyssey pack, but not available before some time this year.

Not a huge fan of this episode, but I guess it's pretty much par for the course of where the series has been the last few seasons. The heel turn character progression of Arya and Sansa (which admittedly happened a while ago) is just really off-putting, and Jamies transformation is a bit too on the nose. Other than that the episode felt like treading water. I get that it's nice to say farewell to everyone that's gonna die and all, but when I realized halfway through the episode that we weren't getting the fight this week it just started feeling like they had to fill out the run-time.

I think it's easy to dismiss the value of just processing power and games utilizing it. We tend to think there wasn't a major shift between this and last generation, but then you go back and you're just shocked by the amount of flat and muddy textures and stilted animations you saw in those games. Even top performers like Witcher 2 or Last of Us look dull compared to the best we see these days. Not that I think it needs to be some super-machine or anything, but we're in an era now where games, not features, sell consoles so all it needs is to be able to support great looking games.

@tennmuerti: I "resolved" a technical issue that was impacting game performance. If you have issues with stuttery main screen and cutscenes it might help resolve that (and have the nice side effect of speeding up the turn timer drastically).

While it's not quite the same thing earlier this year I discovered how to drastically reduce the turn timers in Total Warhammer. I went from having put hundreds of hours into the game without ever finishing a campaign to finishing four in about two weeks time. You might not realize it, but excessive loading can really overshadow your overall enjoyment of the experience.

@cornfed40: I dunno, the read I got at the end of that scene was Cersei being distraught about having to whore herself out again. She's gotten used to holding power through name and force and here's another guy she can't refuse if she wants to stay in power.