also if you’re going to talk shit about MTG’s appearance, “she looks like an Oblivion NPC made flesh” is far more accurate and also much funnier

yeah we’re basically on the same page

but I’m not going to get into all of that here other than to say that I think the internet was better before capital descended upon it like a swarm of locusts

but at the same time, I do think it was objectively better in ways that aren’t explained away by youthful naïveté (unless you think that believing that capitalism is anything other than an unalloyed good is youthfully naïve)

to the now-deleted reply, when I said “NPCs” I was thinking of the traders in the hub, who are really barely more than disembodied voices since they don’t exist in any actual maps. I’m guessing you figured that out which is why you deleted it, but for anyone else who might be wondering, there you go

some of the NPCs are voiced by text to speech with AI cloned voices (allegedly with the consent of the voice actors), they also have an AI voice changer for the in-game voice chat

I was genuinely, pleasantly surprised that Claire’s being trans was not Her Whole Thing. like even after seeing the trans flag painted on her truck I just thought “oh she must just be an ally” until I progressed her quests far enough and she brought it up in conversation

maybe I'm too naive to recognize the kayfabe but I swear I've seen people take the pineapple-on-pizza debate at least as seriously as shit that actually matters