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I thought after playing Star Trek: Resurgence, which I adored, that I'd follow up with The Expanse: A Telltale Series. I'm a fan of both series and The Expanse seems just as well suited to the format, I've enjoyed the other Telltale games I've played and I really like Camina Drummer. Recipe for a slam dunk.

Off the bat, The Expanse has a lot of advantages over Resurgence. It's far better on a technical level - it never crashed, I didn't have any visual bugs, I didn't have any performance problems and there were no input issues. All things Resurgence was rife with.

But here's where the problems start. The Expanse, in a technical sense, is better graphically. It doesn't look better though. It's just creatively kind of dull. This is going to be a running theme with the game - it suffers any time an artistic choice had to be made.

There's only a brief moment in the first episode - of five - where we escape the uninspired industrial corridors. You might point out those industrial corridors are part of the show's aesthetic, but they don't convey the same details about how these machines work and how the people live in them. They miss details like how the decks are laid out in relation to the direction of thrust, and are weirdly wide rather than that utilitarian claustrophobia. The show also had no problem finding spectacular space vistas that are largely absent here.

But visuals are not why we are here. It's the story, right? But for the first time in any Expanse media - from the books, novellas, show, etc - I was incredibly bored. None of these characters are remotely interesting. The Camina I know is intense, driven and decisive. This Camina is unsure, anxious and just all around unimpressive. The politics are gone - not that the faction don't get a lot of lip service, but everything said is incredibly surface level and dull.

The game is blatantly obvious in how it forces outcomes regardless of choice. I was particularly frustrated when I shot a mutinous crew member multiple times, saw him floating limp in space, only for him to teleport mere moments later and have a gun pointed at another crew member again. I had these whiplash moments pretty often, where it felt like there needed to be an intermediary set up scene but instead we just awkwardly jump to something.

More important than decisions in story outcomes is stuff you find while exploring. People live or die based on these. Except you have no idea whether clicking something or walking somewhere is going to trigger a cutscene that'll push you past a threshold where you can't return to find something. Locations of items rely on moon logic - you don't find meds in any of the med bays you go through, you them on a random crate floating in space. The result is an anxiety over whether you'll miss something, and butchered pacing as you aimlessly walk around trying to find these things that could be anywhere.

The voice acting is sadly sub par. I really liked Camina's actress in the show, but she sounds like she is phoning it in here. The others aren't any better. The belter accents were particularly awkward.

It feels weird to talk about game play in this genre, but with dialogue choices this weak I couldn't help but notice how much worse The Expanse's were. There is a lot of tedious filler walking, jarring video game-y avoiding patrolling "drones" with comical red laser beam search lights and holding a button until a thing is collected. Resurgence had plenty of issues in this regard but, to it's credit, it mostly just cut to the next scene (at least in the first half).

The one puzzle I remember was moon logic. You need to work out a password, which is connecting a series of shapes, and are encouraged to look around the environment for shapes that might have been important to the previous inhabitants. Is it any of the pseudo-religious iconography? Anything of sentimental importance? No, it's the path of the silly connect the power lines chore you did earlier.

Ugh, I could go on. This is already way longer than anyone should read. The TL;DR is The Expanse gets a 3/10 for me, compared to Resurgence at a 9/10. It should have been an easy passing grade given my investment in the series and it's suitability for this format but it's just so creatively bankrupt.

One, that's the kind of thin you get from it being cheap and way past the point you're supposed to throw it out. Perfection.

This is just not relatable at all for me. Is this an American thing?

Can an object be on both sides of the portal at once? Like if I ran a cable from the inside to the outside. I'm trying to work out how to handle water and sewage, because like everyone else I've concluded this is obviously a living space.

Picard is like the fantasy of an old man dying in a nursing home, who wishes he could just see is friends one more time.

I wish, Picard is more like a harrowing combination of elder abuse and adult children either too apathetic or scared to take the keys away from their grandpa with dementia long after it's clear he's a danger to himself and others if he keeps driving.

Data telling Worf to suck it up I’m your boss now(One of the best scenes in Trek’s history)

I cannot tell you how much I miss this kind of drama. Nobody yelling, no quippy bullshit, no ridiculous strawman to make sure the audience can understand who is in the right or wrong even if they've had a lobotomy. It's understandable how both characters came to this disagreement. It's tense but the professionalism remains. They're both even surprisingly emotionally honest, even vulnerable, at the end and communicate it clearly and maturely.

What happened to this? This wasn't unique to Star Trek back in the day.

Star Trek is a pulp show from the 60s which is fun to watch. TNG is an iconic show and now classic nothing really needs to be said about on this kind of thread. DS9 subverted the optimism and introduced an episodic drama and was a good ending to the era. Voyager is understood to be best as pop Trek that scratched the itch for the time and kind of fell apart.

Enterprise: Am I a joke to you?

(yes)

then they’ll slap a Trek skin over an Ursula K Le Guin short story

To be fair, it's a story I think should work very well with a Trek skin. It's a simple but poignant ethical dilemma, and there are plenty of interesting ways to rebut or expand on it if you wanted to give it a twist. It's short enough to be adapted into an episode comfortably. How they failed to stick the landing on that one is beyond me.

Thee biggest problem with the show is Captain Seth McFarlane who drags down every episode he’s in. He’s written as a sympathetic sexpest, it’s just afwul. Whenever you get an episode about him, he’s just begging to be back with his ex and being pathetic.

You're absolutely right, but it's both amusing and shocking to me that this was the real problem with his character. Like surely the self-insert character so the family guy-guy, not a career actor, can play out the fantasy of every nerd would either be embarrassingly "bad ass" or terribly acted (or likely both)?

Instead he's too pathetic and gross but honestly surprisingly well acted. I ended up thinking I could actually like Seth McFarlane playing a captain, just not writing one.

The only upcoming game I'm really excited for ❤️‍

I truly cannot overstate how giddy I was in the first couple of hours. The premise is so good.

One of the two protagonists is the new first officer aboard the ship after it suffered a tragic accident. The captain is a decent man but it's left him insecure about his career and legacy. A young outsider taking the XO position instead of one of the original crew has created tensions among the other senior officers. Juicy command drama targeted at me with laser precision.

It gets a bit carried away with it's big "season" arc villain after the first act, but it remains pretty cool.

Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) is my favourite pirate game. No, it's nothing like what you think a licensed tie in game from 2003 would be like.

It's a real oddity. This was made by a Russian studio and originally meant to be a sequel to their previous age of sail game, Sea Dogs. In Russia it was still marketed as a sequel, without the Pirates of the Carribean branding. It has basically nothing to do with the movies in reality. I have no idea how or why this ended up being a tie in.

I don't really have a short hand for describing the genre. It most reminds me of space sims - where you control a vessel which you can replace, has an economy/trade system, management mechanics, factional reputation systems and an open world. It's not a simplified as Freelancer, but not a spreadsheet game like the X series.

The sailing is great, a happy medium between completely arcade stuff where you just point your ship where you want to go and sims. Wind and weather play an important role without being tedious or overwhelming.

You also control a character for ship environments, like boarding, and exploring towns and islands (with swashbuckling combat, of course). It's pretty bare bones but the variety is appreciated. There are lite-RPG dialogue/story mechanics and quests, though I do not want to give the impression this narrative heavy game. It's an RPG style that used to be relatively common but not so much anymore.

But the real highlight is the New Horizons mod which greatly overhauls the game. It's been developed for almost 20 years. I don't recommend playing the vanilla game - I enjoyed it at the time, but it's just an inferior experience to the mod.

Best yet, it's free. The game is abandonware.

You might want to try The Expanse series of books. They're very straight forward but still are engaging with interesting ideas and they've certainly got volume. The language is simple, in a practical and modern kind of way, without feeling dumbed down. It doesn't use any of the structures that can make a book challenging to follow.

The Orville is pretty mid overall, though admittedly with some great episode in there, but boy does it really know how to prey on my nostalgia. Just look at it's opening titles. That ship design is so Trek without being Trek in the best possible way. I just wish it hadn't tried to be funny and took itself seriously instead.

I think the thing that makes most nostalgia baiting repellent is it doesn't understand what I'm nostalgic for, it just points at some intellectual property they bought that I used to like, looks to the camera and says "WOW ISN'T THAT EPIC". I want the spirit of the thing to be passed on in something new, not to be told the thing I like is cool and be invited to circle jerk over it.

Yeah, Star Trek: Resurgence is great. It's a Telltale style game set in the TNG era and gets it. The first act is spot on quality Trek, and the rest is still decent multi-episode finale stuff. Thankfully avoids over-indulging in nostalgia as well - though Riker makes an appearance, which is sadly terribly phoned in - but I don't remember that obnoxious, masturbatory shit every revival does these days where the characters turn to the camera to talk about how cool they think the old stuff was.

Prodigy is a solid kids show, but it's not really going to scratch that Trek itch. It's action adventure that'd probably be a better fit in another sci-fi property. I still appreciate it, it's the kind of thing that's fun to watch with kids while still being adult friendly, and I'm not sure you could do a young kids show in the structure of peak Trek anyway.

Strange New Worlds is okay, inoffensive at least. I wouldn't go as far to say good, it managed to whiff an in-all-but-name adaptation of The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas which seems like it should have been a freebie. But at least it tried something that feels like it should have fit Trek. It's fan service-y in the previously mentioned masturbatory way. It has that modern "soy" (please for the love of god recommend me a better term to convey this) style that I find grating, but not as badly as it could have been. I do remember liking it's musical episode though and Anson Mount is hot as fuck in it (he's so far out of my usual type but god DAMN those cooking scenes at the start of Season 2).

Discovery is an utter disappointment. It starts off as an edgy "what if we gave Star Trek the Battlestar Galactica reboot treatment" then flubs it. By Season 2 they've already given up on it and instead decide to give it the JJ Abrams Star Wars reboot treatment - which is funny, given what he also rebooted, though I think it's more stylistic reminiscent of the worst of Disney Wars. Vapid garbage. I could have warmed up to the BSG-style like I did with Stargate Universe after the initial disappointment, I will never warm up to JJ Abrams.

Picard I hate watched. Truly one of the worst shows ever put to screen. I don't even know where to begin with this. Season 3 is apparently an improvement but I still couldn't make it through the first episode. This is new Trek at it's most masturbatory and vapid.

Lower Decks I can't comment on. I know plenty of people like it but I am repulsed by the idea of it.

Do you have any idea what you might be interested in? Genres, topics, non-fiction/fiction, etc.

I'm unironically disappointed. I'd take any new direction at the moment, I've already been pushed past the point where it wouldn't make a meaningful difference to me if it got worse. Even a change with a low chance of getting better is worth it over a guarantee of remaining shit.

I've never done it in my own home, but I had a coworker I'd text with even though his desk was an arms length away from mine. Mostly because it could be hard to tell when either of us was on or about to make a call.

Yeah, /tg/ has a share thread. It's kind of ephemeral and it's not straight forward to navigate but if something cant be found elsewhere it's your best bet.

Only ever used it for piracy, it's been the most reliable source for finding niche TTRPG books. From the first time I used it to now it probably averages out to once or twice a year, though in practice it comes in bursts.