tbarrie

So thinking about how the last week of matches is likely to go, I came up with what I think is the most absurd idea for Collision: Claudio beats Danielson, Kingston beats Andrade, and Brody beats Garcia. That would put Garcia at 0 points and everybody else tied at 9. Making the whole Blue League essentially just an elaborate way to make Daniel Garcia look bad.

I can't tell if that last bit was meant to imply that things would get even better in a few weeks, or if you were listing Ospreay's current absence as another example of something gone right.

How about this scenario: Danielson beats Brody and loses to Claudio Brody loses to Danielson and Garcia Andrade loses to Kingston and Claudio Claudio beats Danielson and Andrade Garcia beats Brody and loses to Kingston Kingston beats Garcia and Andrade That puts Danielson, Andrade, Claudio, and Kingston all at 9 points. God knows how the tiebreakers will work then. But Claudio and Kingston will each have beaten two of the guys they're tied with while Danielson and Andrade will only have beaten one each, so I think maybe Claudio and Kingston advance?

I thought red neck kung fu was how Mark Briscoe murdered people. Why would he drop it when angry?

You're right. I was thinking White and Swerve would be tied with Swerve getting the tiebreak, and missed that this would put Rush even with them on points.

It's more complicated than that. If White beats Moxley and Swerve beats Rush, then Moxley, Swerve, and White all end with 12 pts. And because they went rock-paper-scissors, tiebreakers are no help in determining who advances. So presumably we'd get a triple threat instead of a singles match as the Gold League semifinals. If White beats Moxley and Rush beats Swerve, then Swerve is out and Moxley and White get a rematch in the semis, with White in first place and Moxley in second. If Moxley beats White, then Swerve is in second place whether he beats Rush or not. If Moxley and White tie and Swerve either beats or ties with Rush, then Swerve still gets second place. If Moxley and White tie and Rush beats Swerve, then it's Moxley in first place and White in second.

That would make more sense, honestly. Father going from "Synths are just tools, not people, and it's ridiculous to think otherwise!" to "Can you accept this synth as a child?" certainly didn't make much sense. Some have interpreted this as an attempt to give him more character depth, but if so it didn't land for me. And I still disagree that synths can't get fat by eating, despite the terminal explicitly stating that. But I suspect nobody wants to participate in an argument on exegesis of Bethesda games.:)

Care to tell me more about the GM Mode? I've been exclusively using Universe Mode on '22, but I turned off Rivalries entirely because the stuff the computer comes up with is so stupid. I'm asking now because '23 is currently 85% off (maybe only for people who own '22; I'm unclear on that point). Paying full price for the WWE series every year seems crazy to me - they just don't change enough year to year to justify the cost - but at under twenty bucks Canadian, I'm leaning towards trying it out.

It's a subject of debate. But in my mind, talking about "aging" as one thing is inaccurate - children growing to maturity and bodies slowly breaking down leading to inevitable death seem like different processes to me. I find it entirely plausible that the Institute couldn't duplicate the former; I find it considerably less plausible that they'd find a way a prevent the latter. And there is some clear lore that synth Shaun won't mature - some background characters at the Institute can be heard talking about how it's sad that he'll be a child forever. Which is taken literally would mean synths don't age in any sense, but of course humans use "forever" to mean "your entire life" all the time. (My dental office talks about promoting habits that will lead to teeth which last forever. This seems unlikely to literally occur.) So on the question of whether synths age in the bad sense, there's no clear answer in the game. My stance is that they do, not only because of how hard it would be to prevent that - the laws of thermodynamics are a bitch to circumvent - but because the game is clear that no medical test can distinguish a human from a Gen 3 synth. I don't see how you could make tissue that duplicates human tissue so thoroughly but that didn't age. (I also dismiss the idea that synths don't need to eat, even though there's apparently info in a terminal somewhere saying they don't.) Oh, I think you can be pretty evil in Fallout 4. You can side with the Institute, who are cartoonishly evil, or the Brotherhood, who are pretty racist. (Fantastic racists, admittedly, which is less odious than real racism. But that's a pretty low bar.) There's a fair bit of the game devoted to helping settlements, granted, but it's all completely optional. I've had playthroughs where the only settlements I controlled were ones where my PC needed a bed so she killed some settlers and took over the settlement. It's true that the dialogue trees don't give you the option to express a lack of interest in finding your son, though, so if you're playing a complete jerk who doesn't care about their kid at all you have to at least pretend. But then, the dialogue options are one of Fallout 4's biggest weak points in general.

Thanks. So where does NJPW Weak operate? Lichtenstein?

You know, it occurs to me I have no idea what a "Strong Openweight" title even is. Are Openweight titles like nuclear forces? There's a Strong one and a Weak one?

Hmm. You may have broken it, yeah. I've never tried killing that courser immediately. Well, that's the Brotherhood. When you're hunting them for sport and run into a randomly spawning group and you pick them off one by one, the rest just stand there. Even fucking Raiders are smart enough to go on high alert and (usually futilely) try to find the person responsible when one of their buddies suddenly takes a bullet in the head. But not those Brotherhood bozos. (And to be fair, I've always assumed that if I wasn't Hidden when I started killing them the rest would become hostile and start fighting back. But maybe not.)

The problem I see with that is if Bryan and Claudio finish with a match where the winner advances, and Brody King wins another match, then there's no way for Eddie Kingston to get out of the Blue League. And I still think there's a good chance Eddie's winning this thing - like I said before, wrestling bookers love dramatic come-from-behind wins. Of course, it occurs to me you might have meant Bryan vs Claudio in a match where Bryan has to win to advance, but Claudio has already been mathematically eliminated. Which could be more interesting. Would Bryan expect his stablemate to lay down for him? On the one hand, that's very much not in keeping with the Blackpool Combat Club's stated ethos. On the other hand, Bryan has totally been in dickhead mode all tournament.

Unless he wins, of course. If he already has three singles titles going for a fourth might be overkill.

Oh, definitely. And when you're building an outpost on an uninhabited planet, that arguably even makes some sense. But one of the questlines rewards you with a nice condo in New Atlantis and a decent sum of money, and you'd think you could use the latter to furnish the former. But not so much. Even in the middle of the largest city in the Settled Systems, if you don't have the skills to build the furniture you want from scratch, you're out of luck. That seems a little odd.

Well, the economy in Starfield is generally pretty weird. As I may have mentioned before, it's seemingly impossible to buy furniture. On the other hand, there's no shortage of grocery stores who will happily give you credits for a half-eaten sandwich.

I love that you need to go to a cosmetic surgeon to change your earrings. I'm on my fifth character right now, none of whom have completed the main questline. Not that I find it terrible or anything; I just keep getting distracted by thoughts of how a different character might handle things and starting over.

Did they? I didn't realize that. That gives Eddie a lot more options if they want to do the come-from-behind victory.

I thought the tiebreaker was who won the match between the wrestlers in question, but I don't remember if that was specifically stated for the Continental Classic or if it's something I absorbed about round-robin tournaments in general. But if I'm right, now that Brody and Danielson have each beaten Eddie, he'll need to finish with MORE points than either to make the finals.

I believe Abadon uses "they" pronouns. (And it sounded like somebody clued Tony Schiavone in mid-match, as he switched from using "she" to "they".) And I don't know. The mist having the opposite effect on Abadon would be pretty funny. You're probably right that it would be a bad idea for the character in the long run, though.

My understanding is that the winners of each round-robin face off at Worlds End. I could be misinformed, of course.

It's very hard. For example, if Brody wins another match Eddie is finished. If Danielson wins two more matches Eddie is finished.

That reminds me - last week, why didn't Lady Frost make her stip "Ice powers are legal"? She would have won easily.

Those are the colours of Riverdale High. Tony Khan is probably a big Archie Comics fan.

That sounds okay to me - my favourite issues of the Lee/Ditko era were Spidey fighting a small army of ordinary mooks, so I'm down with a game that encourages you to recreate those scenes.