T. rex was unusual in that it dominated the predator niche in the late Maastrichtian of North America to such a degree that different age sets actually occupied smaller and medium sized predator roles rather than there being other species in those roles as you'd expect. Here's an image of T. rex age sets, with the big mama-jama in the background obviously being the fully grown adult.
Tachiraptor chasing Laquintasaura in very early Jurassic Venezuela. Although here represented as looking very Coelophysis-like, it's not entirely clear that it did, especially with that very specific kink in the jaw. Tachiraptor is believed to be part of what was formerly a ghost lineage separating the Coelophysians, which belonged to the same "grade", but on the Averostran group.
Just cool fantasy; beautiful landscapes, and flying airships.
The other side of "nice scenery" when it comes to fantasy. Given that our own women in real life Western Civilization have become shrewish, shrieking harpies thanks to the toxic feminist ideology, for the most part, seeing feminine and beautiful women in fantasy is more appealing than ever.
Speaking of which, the Boris Vallejo cover art for Tarnsman of Gor. Gor, of course, has developed an infamous reputation as pseudo-pornographic misogynist whatever, but I've only ever read the first novel, back in the day when it was still readily available in paperback, and I thought it was just mostly a credible fake Barsoom. I actually highly recommend at least the first one. I actually trust at least some of the commentary that suggests that the series goes downhill pretty fast into silliness, although I'm obviously much less concerned about hand-wringing about misogyny, which I think is idiotic.
A highly stylized rendition of Tarzan and, I dunno—is that La? Whoever it is.
An old 3e image that is kinda stupid, but offers an interesting callback to the 1e PHB. Actually, that's the best thing the image has going for it by a long shot...
I never played it, but at least one of my sons was really into the first Destiny game for quite a while (he was keenly disappointed in the second one.) But whether you liked the game itself or not, you couldn't argue with the concept art, which was always phenomenal.
This techpriest is, I believe, part of some Black Library fiction cover art gallery.
The King in Yellow, with tentacles.
A ghoul? Skeleton? Zombie? Whatever, it's a cool image.
Frank Frazetta's classic cover art for the Doubleday double book which included the Gods of Mars and Warlord of Mars, books 2 and 3 of the Barsoom series.
Some concept art for the flawed but also fascinating Disney Black Hole movie. Made in the wake of Star Wars' success, it wasn't really the same kind of movie at all, but it's very definitely worth checking out if for some reason you never have.
I dunno. Cool image. Could be an Iron Kingdoms thing, but it could also just be a Russian dude with a cannon.
And some fan art of Gozer the Gozerian with her Keymaster and Gatekeeper in monstrous form.
In other news, I've slowed down a bit on Red Dead Redemption. Although the animal problem has mostly been fixed; I can find them without too much adverse effort anymore, the glitches relative to the camp have become worse and are honestly more broken as a problem than the animals were. At least without animals you could still do something else in the meantime. Without a camp that works, and with getting kicked off the server halfway through your session, which is what's happened more often to me lately, the game is unplayable.
I have managed, at least, to keep my daily challenge streak up, but I haven't really managed to do too much else.
Sigh. When the new content comes out in a few weeks with a new role and a new outlaw pass (presumably) they better fix some of these bugs.
I should point out that with the Thomas Rubin track of a very techy remix by Renegade System that I embedded yesterday, it refers to a new release that has the Scot Project Remix and the Original Mix on it. However, that's "Original Mix" is actually not. The original release on Druck, the famous German hard trance record label from 15-20 or so years ago had an Original Mix and a Russenmafia Remix. (Thomas Rubin is actually a nom de plume for the two guys of Russenmafia.) What this new release calls the Original Mix is actually the Russenmafia Remix. The original Original Mix is actually a very different track.
In fact, as far as I know, with the release of this new Renegade System Remix, there are now five versions of this track, the Original Mix, the Russenmafia Mix, the Krämer & Pogadl Mix, and the Scot Project Remix, and now this newly released one by Renegade System. Andreas Krämer and Thomas Pogadl are actually the two guys of Russenmafia/Thomas Rubin, though—so three of the five versions are variations done by the same original artist. This is a little hard to determine for sure, though, because there's an obvious misprint on the sleeve and the actual center of the vinyl for the original release, where both versions say that they are8:04 in length (in fact, neither are—the "original" Original is 7:14 and the Russenmafia Remix is 8:50.)
Personally, as I've probably mentioned here many times before, I think the Scot Project one is over-rated as a lot of Scot Project projects are. It's fine, but it's not the best version. The new Renegade System and the "original" Russenmafia Remix are easily the best versions.
Anyway, just in case you're curious to do so, I'm including embedded YouTube videos of all five versions, however. As is my wont, for the two best versions, I'm speeding them up to 150 bpm and putting them in a separate folder on my phone, though, so I can listen to them the way God intended hard trance to be heard.
The "original" Original Mix:
The Russenmafia Remix, later called the Original Mix, as this video is labeled.
The Krämer & Pogadl Remix. Keep in mind that while Krämer and Pogadl are, of course, the same people as Thomas Rubin and Russenmafia both, Russenmafia in particular was a hard trance alias, while Krämer & Pogadl was the name that they used mostly for schranz releases. I've never been much of a schranz fan, and likewise, I don't really like this mix all that much.
The Scot Project Remix. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with it, I just don't think it's as good as the Russenmafia or the newer Renegade System remixes. Scot Project does some good work, but he's not some kind of trance god or anything.
And finally, the newly released Renegade System version, in it's full "extended" iteration.
And by new, I mean classics that have new remixes put out by different artists. But, since the tracks are classics and the remixes are generally pretty good, that's still very welcome.
The Project Luminous tease was finally unveiled yesterday (I think?) and it's Star Wars: The High Republic. This is kinda like the Old Republic, except instead of 4,000 years before Star Wars, it's 200 years before. But it's the same idea; let's go early, where there's no conflicts with anything, so authors and creators can do their own thing. However, of course, while BioWare's Old Republic started out well and only later accreted a bunch of nonsense SJWisms—which are still insufficient, I might add, to completely drown the excellence of what's good about the Old Republic era—I have very little reason to expect that the High Republic will ever surpass or even equal the Old Republic, and that it will start from the get-go with SJWisms baked in, making it tedious to begin with.
One minor detail that the seemed to have fixed from Lucas's own nonsense is the Jedi look, however. In the first Star Wars movie, Ben Kenobi is wearing that rough-spun brown robe because it was what the locals wore because of the climate on Tatooine. In High Republic, the Jedi have both temple robes, which are more formal looking, white and gold, with a kind of action-oriented pope vibe to them, a little bit (actually, they also remind me a bit of the Eternal Empire outfits from that part of Old Republic) but also "on assignment" robes. The difference between military dress or parade uniforms and BDUs, I suppose. The "Jedi BDUs" seem to have a kind of leather look to a lot of them, to give them that brown look that people have come to expect, I imagine, yet without looking exactly like they're just wearing "poor desert planet peasant" as an actual uniform, which was always really stupid, and only a feature that Lucas did for the prequels and beyond.
That's... the good, I suppose. The rest of the story is told in this graphic, taken from the launch trailer (and marked up by Yellowflash 2, and I'll talk about it just a bit.
Let's go through what it says and see what we think about this, from a "diverse" writers built by committee approach to Star Wars.
Fiction
—Authentically lived in—this is of course a good thing, and has always been one of Star Wars' strengths. However, SJWs don't authentically live at all; everything to them is some kind of mental distortion, emotional mirage, or social construct. I actually saw the picture of the writers, and... well, let's just say, physiognomy is real and those are the faces of SJWs, so I doubt that this will be a goal that they accomplish, no matter how much they write it on the white board of their desired outcomes.
—Surprise—this one isn't a bad thing, unless, of course, it is debased to merely mean "subvert expectations". And, I've said it before and I'll say it again, a less surprising but well-executed fiction is much better than a surprising but poorly executed one.
—Diversity—I can't roll my eyes hard enough, but the fact that they want to highlight this already means that the project is probably doomed already.
—Actual ending—I'm not sure what they mean here, but it kind of makes me laugh. Especially considering the irony of Disney taking an actually ended saga, tacking on some poorly related sequels, and then pretending that they are just as much a part of the larger saga as the stuff that was already done which was actually ended already. And, in addition to that, they left a little bit of a cliffhanger on their fake ending as it was. Unreal.
—Feelings—oh, please.
—Relatable characters—like Rey? Like Ezra? Like Sabine or Satine (actually, I can't remember which one is which, but neither are relatable at all.) Star Wars has struggled with this since the original trilogy, and they don't seem to be on the verge of cracking that nut any time soon. Especially not with this crowd of writers, who just at a glance I can tell I don't really relate to very much myself.
—Sweeping/epic—to be fair, I'm glad that they see this, because a weakness of much of the Expanded Universe stuff. Picking out some random extra and trying to tell his story has been uninspired, for the most part, especially when the sweeping/epic scale was part and parcel of the original trilogy's ouevre.
Star Wars Heart (rolleyes)
—Not pro-war—what? Aren't the crazy SJWs following the zeitgeist? Ever since Orange Man Bad said that he wanted to get us out of wars in strange places that nobody American can articulate why we're fighting, being pro-war is what is Right and True for an SJW! Anyway, this is Star Wars. Being heroic means fighting evil, and that means accepting that war is a reality that should be avoided, but only so far, and not feared. We are talking about heroes, right? Oh, right. SJWs. r-strategests. Of course.
—The rest of these.... I don't really know what to say about them other than that they are a basic iteration of some elements of Star Wars that are iconic. OK, yeah—good idea to list them if you're so disconnected from the franchise that this isn't terribly obvious, but if you are, then you are not a good candidate to write for it then, are you? I will say, though, that the elimination of the concept of a single main character or small set of main characters is a good move. That wasn't a problem with the story arc of the original trilogy, but it was a problem when the prequels and even the sequels, as well as most of the spin-off stuff, couldn't really let go of them or their immediate families.
Star Wars Wishes
—High Republic—I'm not sure what this means other than its I guess an attempt to suggest that they'd like to show a functioning Empire (even though, yeah, they call it a Republic. That's what people say about the United States too, and it's been a functional empire since 1865. Even SJW history textbooks talk about Imperialism being a major force in America between the Civil War and the World Wars, although they neglect to mention that our behavior since has been more Imperial than it was during this so-called Imperial phase.) Whatever. No doubt, it will be much like it was in the Clone Wars era and the Old Republic where it was allegedly a mostly benevolent Empire—allegedly—yet plagued with self-righteous anxiety and corruption. Kinda bored with that particular message, to be honest with you. It says way too much about the SJW state of mind and what they really feel towards people other than their allegedly elite little in-group.
—Relic hunters—this can be OK... but it seems more video gamey than anything else. If we're already talking about a time far (enough) in the past, why do they need to look for relics from even further in the past? Because Indiana Jones was a fun movie, and nobody can think of anything else do to except copy it?
—University—so we can have Jedi Hogwarts, of course! Ugh. I don't know what these SJWs would want to do with Star Wars High Republic university, but I can't imagine anything that isn't cringy.
—Dinosaurs!—funny that they had so much trouble spelling that. Whatever. Aliens would be better, but big alien animals are basically dinosaurs to the ignorant and the non-discriminating, I suppose. Although other than visual window-dressing, I'm not quite sure how they would really make any difference on the setting.
—Representation/diversity—they have to mention it again? Tell you what; us white males wish you would stop trying to appropriate our own, specific type of fiction which is unique to us, and blackwash it, brownwash it, pinkwash it, or whatever else you're doing. It serves no purpose except to insult your fan base on purpose and rub it in our faces that you have the levers of control over something that we once loved, which was based on a vast body of (admittedly, mostly non-visual) work that was all explicitly written for white males by white males at a time when our country was still made up of white people and was a homeland for white people to practice white culture unmolested and uninterferred with by anyone else. This right here is exactly why Terminator, DC/Birds of Prey, Ghostbusters, and many, many more have bombed huge at the box office in the last few months. Just. Freaking. Knock. It. Off. You cannot really be so ignorant as to not notice that you have exhausted our patience with your constant covetousness, envy and ankle-biting about how you couldn't do what white males could do and you want white male culture to yourself, except with all of the white males thrown out. We get it. Now get lost. (As an aside, every time I read Isaiah, I get something new out of it. Caught this interesting gem describing the last days in chapter 13 verse 14, about the nations of the world and what will happen to them in the last days: "[T]hey shall every man turn to his own people, and flee every one into his own land." Can't happen soon enough.)
—Arthurian legends—am I reading this right? I'm not 100% sure that that's what it says. That said, Star Wars has always borrowed from pretty much every potential swashbuckling and adventurous source that there is, so why not? Arthurian legends are so tightly tied to both the Norman-British nation and Christianity that it's a little hard to do them without watering them down to the point of silliness, in my opinion. UPDATE: Seen a bit more about this here and there, where the Jedi are supposed to be kinda like the Knights of the Round Table, with a stable Camelot in the center of the galaxy, I guess, and more "Space Wild West" on a much larger frontier area of the galaxy.
—Rival houses—Star Wars does assume princes, princesses, royals and nobles, so this is kind of a given that there should be some of this involved, or at least that there could. Given how much Star Wars borrowed from Dune, it's a little bit surprising that there really isn't any of this already integrated, to be honest. Unless they meant something like Gryffindor vs Slytherin, in which case blegh. And even if they don't, the whole "one house stereotypically and stupidly "good" and the rival "evil" is both boring and stupid and shouldn't be done that way.
—Sith Empire—they recognize that the Sith are just the perfect iconic villains and it's hard to do Star Wars without them. Which is exactly why the rule of two and some of Lucas' later decisions when applied to the prequels in particular were bad decisions. Of course, I don't know how they can do this without simply ignoring existing canon, but eh.
—Chaos agents—I'm not sure exactly what they mean by this; terrorists? The Joker? Antifa? In any case, villains that aren't either Sith or Hutts/gangsters would certainly be welcome. That's the kind of ACTUAL diversity Star Wars has always needed, hence my approach with Star Wars Remixed and later Ad Astra of a politically Balkanized galaxy with multiple rival empires and powers.
Anyway, there's a lot to be concerned about on that list, and a lot that's kinda a given and "duh". And, to be fair, a few ideas that are genuinely good, even if not exactly earth-shatteringly innovative or brilliant.
UPDATE II: And I saw a screengrab that showed a line below what this one shows: for fiction it has Humor (OK, why not, I suppose), for Star Wars Heart it has Complicated monsters which is a major red flag to me (look at my complaints about a lot of the Paizo work, particularly in the Cult of Undeath project I did) and the Wish List had Splinter group force users (which, I've already done.) Not much to say about any of those. I still think the problem is in the link above; the writers who they caucused to do this are all super-woke retards themselves, so naturally, the end product will be as well.
DH5, my updated setting, can be seen as reflecting two things equally. One of them is the early Middle Ages; a kind of Robin Hood or Ivanhoe era Anglo-Saxon England, with other European peoples, like the Normans, Franks/French, Scots, etc. around as well. However, they've been transposed, if you will, into a setting that more closely resembles Colonial to Old West America than it does Medieval Europe. Prior to the real conquering and taming of the American West, but long enough ago that they're not confined to a relatively narrow strip of Eastern floodplains on one side of any Appalachian-like mountains; I want genuine American west and southwestern terrain and tropes, animals, and whatnot. I know, I know, those seem a little odd in terms of a combination; but the reality is that both are my own cultural heritage, and they both resonate really well with me, and they tend to, because of that, feel most at home with me. The more I think about fantasy, the more I think that I really need both to really enjoy it.
Now, granted, when I say that I'm equal parts Robin Hood era Middle Ages (maybe even complete with Crusades) and the Old West, keep in mind that this needs to hearken back to when our culture was confident in who it was. Revisionist Westerns and self-flagellating about the Crusades or whatever is nonsense, and I want no part of it.
The poor, hapless "native Americans"—a label that I actually despise because they are no more native than I am, and they are considerably less American—is a trope that I also have no currency with. I have no problem whatsoever reflecting the historical reality that they were savages in every sense of the word. That said, my skraelings aren't exactly red man injuns either; they're kinda their own thing that's part red man injun, part lingering Western Hunter Gatherers, part the Neanderthals from Eaters of the Dead, part Tolkien Druedain and part Tolkien Orc, part degenerate Atlantean refugee.
But that's just the context, really. What I want to talk about today is something that I'm borrowing from Red Dead Redemption just a bit. RDR2 (and RDR1, for that matter) did not focus on strange supernatural stuff, but it was present. Mostly, it was just a bit of atmosphere and easter eggs; something to make players sit up and congratulate themselves on being clever enough to find and understand. But what if the setting actually focused more on them? What if instead of a story about outlaws and anti-heroes trying to make a buck and not sink completely into violence and depravity, it were the story of adventurers wandering around who seemed fated (or who perhaps deliberately) sought out the occult, the supernatural and the mysterious and and confronted it? What if instead of John Marsten and Arthur Morgan, or even Ivanhoe and Robin Hood, it were Solomon Kane and the Winchester brothers?
I don't mean this to be an exhaustive list, but some of the supernatural stuff found in RDR2 is certainly worthy of an entire tale's worth of adventuring, so here's a little list:
The Saint Denis vampire, or Nosferatu. Who may or may not actually be a vampire, as opposed to just a crazy serial killer, but in DH5—yeah, he's a vampire.
The pagan ritual human sacrifice site out by Lake Owanjilla
The ghost train near Flatneck Station.
The weeping woman in the swamp of Bayou Nwa, who when approached is suddenly guarded by an army of zombies.
The whispering voices in the woods of Roanoke Ridge, who's story is told in the movie theater tent as The Ghastly Serenade. This is, by the way, also a story of either witchcraft or undead, although what the players actually see "in real life" is just the muted and eerie disembodied whispering.
The pentacle and whatever exactly cult/occult demonology is going on at Butcher's Creek.
The Night Folk who practice some kind of voodoo cult, and may include zombies among their number. They also seem to be related, based on the similar or even identical symbology, with the pagan ritual at Lake Owanjilla.
The bizarrely clairvoyant automated puppet at the crashed circus wagons.
The supernatural plague at Armadillo, including the deal with the devil made by the storekeeper.
The Strange Man and his strange house at Lakay.
UFOs on Mount Shann and at Hani's Bethel.
Bigfoot
Time traveling rock carvers
The mysterious plague of Pleasance and the possibility of zombie outbreaks
This kind of stuff is the bread and butter of what PCs or protagonists would actually be neck deep into with regards to any DH5/Hill Country story. Also, see this.
This last week there were two major updates to RDR to fix things with Online play. How did it work out? I tend to be able to find animals more now, but it's still harder than in really light sessions or in single player. That said, if I spend ten minutes wandering around, I can usually run across several small animals—jackrabbits, mostly, but also raccoons, badgers, possums, etc. plus some ravens or other birds, and a little band of coyotes, deer and/or antelope. If I'm up more in the mountains, sometimes it's a bighorn sheep. So, I'd say that the animal spawn issue is... improved, although I don't know if it's still as good as it's meant to be, and it does take more time and wandering around to find fewer animals than I think most people think it should. But it's not hopeless with animals. There were times when I played for an hour or more without seeing anything other than a couple of birds in the past. If a "better" fix doesn't come, I'll survive. I actually thought hunting was too easy sometimes in single player, unless you wanted a very specific animal, of course, which sometimes was harder.
I also have not had any issue with camp spawning since the upgrade. It's always been there, in the region that I last left it (although sadly, not the exact same spot) since the second fix, at least. After the first fix, it wasn't there, but then when I went to pitch the camp, it let me do it, which under the broken unpatched version, I couldn't do.
And finally, after the first patch, I actually got kicked off the servers more than I have ever before, but after the second patch, that doesn't seem to be as much of an issue. Granted, I haven't played it as much either, but the data, scant as it is, is what it is. It really does seem that the fixes are in, and the game isn't nearly as broken anymore. One can hope. I'm optimistic.
That said, I don't know how much more of the grind I can take before I start finding it tedious, too. I'm almost at level 20 with my trader, so I can get the cool trader horses, and I'll eventually get one, outfit it with the trader saddle, etc. That's likely to be my go-to horse; in fact, given that my current horse is still the horse I started with, I may just get rid of him altogether and have the trader horse.
My collector rank is 16 or 17, so once that's up to 20, I'll get the good horse from that track as well, and have those two horses going. My moonshiner and bounty hunter ranks, on the other hand, are still in single digits, so those won't be ready to go for quite some time. But that's one of my big collectible goals right now; one of the top horses for each role. Given that a fifth role is probably imminent, as well as another outlaw pass, I'll have more to work on. And I do still need to keep just plain leveling up and upgrading my camp, of course. Although I don't find that quite as compelling in its own right as it was during single player, for whatever reason.
I've so far not really dived too much into bounty hunter and moonshiner. I did think I'd like the bounty hunter, but I've often found that doing the missions are frustrating, both due to glitches and issues I've had (getting kicked out in mission, the bounty spawning right next to the edge of the map and "escaping" before I could even leave town after picking up the poster, etc.) but I think once I get to the level that I can do the legendary bounties, it'll be more predictable and therefore more enjoyable. I also find that the "feature" where it's actually hard to see the bounty on the mini-map is frustrating; I've either accidentally killed the bounty because he was standing near another enemy and I couldn't see it, or had them run and be very difficult to find sometimes. I really expected to like that role the best, and I don't, sadly.
The moonshiner is the one that probably has the most potential because of the additional story missions, but for whatever reason I haven't really gotten into them. I actually had a lot of frustration in that I had to go rescue Lem three times, and even though I had rescued him and brought him back—and gotten the XP and whatnot for completing the mission—it still showed it as undone, and I had to go do it again. Finally, the third time, it 'caught' and showed me the next mission, but I've been a bit reluctant to do it since because of that.
So, I guess I've got plenty to do, but the trader and collector were the easiest to get into. I know, I know—I'm not done when I reach max rank in those roles, because I probably still want to do them for the relatively good money that they bring in. But when I get to the point where I'm talking about having multiple horses, wanting the camp upgrades and themes to flip between, and I'm actually spending more money than any rational person would to buy a bunch of outfits for my cranky old coot camp butler dude, then it's not surprising that my eye is starting to wander just a bit when I log in. But, with new content, new roles, and stuff that I actually have but still need to dive into to explore, I'll probably keep playing this for months, at least, before I get ready to move on.
Besides, my brother's had one problem after another with the computer he's building for me, so almost two months after I expected it to be running on my desk in the alternate bedroom (which now that my son is in Peru will probably gradually turn into a more or less permanent library/study type room anyway) I'm still waiting on it. So, no Old Republic and no Street Fighter on Steam yet, and no ETA on either. But once I do have them, I'll no doubt play a lot less RDR than I have been doing the last several weeks.
UPDATE: I probably spoke too soon. I had loads of camp loading issues last night and this morning, and in fact, I now have even newer camp loading issues that are not the same ones that I'd had before. It's one thing when you load the game at your camp and its not there, but its another altogether when it disappears as soon as you look away, or if the map says that your camp is there, but it isn't really.
I have, on the other hand, done reasonably well with animals. Finished the last of the trader XP I needed, in fact. I'll still keep hunting and doing trader, because it's a pretty good avenue for big chunks of cash in one go, and I'm pretty close to topping off the collector levels too, but it's time to start getting more serious about bounty hunting and moonshiner. To that effect, I did my first legendary bounty last night as well as the second moonshiner story mission. They actually both felt very similar; raid a camp of enemies, hide behind trees and crates and shoot about thirty bad guys before finishing up and moving on.
And because I have the shovel and the metal detector, I decided to get a set of map images that show me all three cycles of collectibles, and I'll go for complete runs of coins every time I have about an hour or so to do it (my guess for how long it will take) which is another relatively easy source of big cash. And I need it. After leveling up to 20 in Trader, because I had just over $1,000 on hand, I went and bought one of the top rank Kladrubar horses. It—curiously—looks quite a bit like my gray Kentucky Saddler that I've had since the beginning of the game, especially with the same saddle and mask on, just with much better stats (even without leveling the horse up yet.) I ditched the Kentucky Saddler, because really—why would I ever want to ride that again? I named my new horse Little John because he's actually fairly big and I'm going to go for a Robin Hood theme for my animals (my husky at camp is named Alan-a-Dale.) When I get a Breton (either Steely Gray or Mealy Dapple) I'll call him Friar Tuck, I'll probably have a Criollo in just a few days (bay frame overo) I plan on calling Will Scarlet (although marble sabino might look the part better, since it's reddish) and the Norfolk Roadster, of whichever of the two top colors I end up picking, will be my first female horse, and I'll call her Maid Marian.
If new roles add new horses, I'm not quite sure where to go, because I've about run out of Merry Men that are worth mentioning. Do I really want Much the Miller, or Arthur a Bland? Who in the world even knows who they are? Maybe I do need to start using Ivanhoe names too (my Kentucky Saddler was named Ivanhoe.) From that, I've got; what—Cedric (of Rotherwood), Ivanhoe, Rowena, Locksley? I can even have a Jewish horse, Isaac of York. Gurth and Wamba I think I'll pass on for the same reason that I don't like Much the Miller. I can dig into the Norman names, like Brian de Bois-Gilbert, or Reginald Front-de-Boeuf, Maurice de Bracy, etc.
Besides the role horses, I probably will want a Missouri Foxtrotter and maybe a black Arabian, with Nacogdoches saddles. I want all of the role horses to eventually end up with their appropriate role saddle too, although so far the bounty hunter saddle is the only one I have, so my trapper horse is sporting a bounty hunter saddle. Maybe that'll be an easy first purchase after I get my cash back up again in the next day or two.
But I presume because every role so far has a unique horse and unique saddle that as new roles are added, they will also have new horses and new saddles, so I'll probably mostly focus on getting them once I have the four current roles and one or two other elite horses in my stable.
UPDATE 2: I wasn't aware of some of these, but most of them don't really matter to me, either. Didn't know about the catalog to keep from being kicked for idling, and didn't know about the stew and stuff at the town camps. Nor the apples. I need to go by there anyway for coin pickups, so why not?
The lantern equip seems kinda silly, although I didn't know that either.
Also; this, this week. Good thing I tried out one of the new legendary bounty hunter missions last night; now I know I can focus on doing the other nine (at 1 star difficulty still) this week and maybe max out my bounty hunter rank. I'm at 7th? 8th? I still have a ways to go, but +50% XP will get me there a lot faster.
It's possible—probable, even—that I have more versions of "First Impression" than I do any other EDM track, and for the most part, they are quite different. And I deliberately ditch the "Edit" versions; I suppose I could have a couple more if I counted them too.
It's not hard for me to pick a favorite; that's clearly the Nomad Mix. But of the rest, it's hard to pick a "second favorite" and nearly half a dozen are in contention. Let me list the entire run of remixes. Fifteen of them (eighteen if I counted the shorter "edit" versions) are on the 10th Anniversary re-release, but then there are two additional remixes and a bootleg that I have too. You shouldn't have any trouble whatsoever finding full versions of all of them on YouTube and listening to them if you so desire. I'm going to bold and redthe ones that coulda been a contender, so to speak.
S.H.O.K.K. Mix—absolutely brilliant; the one that was famous from the original release, and all subsequent remixes borrow from this one extensively.
DJ Loudness vs Dave Joy Mix—not bad at all, although not a top tier one. A bit of a laid-back hypnotic trancer rather than a floorbanger, although the track is famous as a floorbanger in part because of the S.H.O.K.K. Mix and subsequent mixes that were more in the S.H.O.K.K. vein.
Original Skyline Mix—one of the more boring ones. The recognizable melody is buried here and not very distinctive. It has the typical trancey sound of trance, by which I mean that it kinda sounds hypnotic and repetitive. As opposed to the way trance evolved with the build-ups and drops that was the opposite of hypnotic. If you think about it, trance as it's become is a woefully misnamed style.
The UK release had, along with the S.H.O.K.K. Mix the following two versions, although you had to get them on different releases.
Dave 202 & Phil Green Remix—This was on the regular release by Difuse, and it's a great version.
Dark By Design & Sol Ray Remix—Another great one, this time on another label (Goodgreef), and tagged with the Limited designation.
There was a 2008 re-release, although both remixes are a little meh. The Acid Maniacs is the better of the two, at least.
Paul Webster Remix—a really housey, trip-hoppy almost version. Do not want.
Acid Maniacs Remix—converting the famous melody line into a piano solo that goes a bit off the sheet music may have been a bold move, but I'm not sure how much I like it. Other than that weirdness, though, the mix has a fair bit to like.
In 2009 there was a "Part 2" release. It had some previously released tracks, as well as shorter mixes, but it also added two new full length remixes:
Michael Tsukerman Remix—also a little less "bangy" and more hypnotic. There's nothing wrong with this mix, but it does seem to be a bit non-memorable compared to many of the others.
DJ Dean Remix—I really like this mix a lot too. I tend to think of DJ Dean as kind of a cheesy trancer in general, although he has some nice bangin' tunes. It's a shame that he kinda has that reputation, because he's obviously very talented at making this type of music, and I do really enjoy some of his other work too. The only reason this one kinda slips through the cracks are because the competition from other remixes is so good.
There was another 2009 remix, called the UK Edition, even though it was released in Switzerland on the home Swiss label. It does include the Dark by Design vs Sol Ray remix, and adds an additional three new remixes; although I'm admittedly a little bit ambivalent about all three.
Diablo Traxx Collective Remix—I actually have sped up my favorite versions of the tracks to 150 bpm and put them in a different folder (although I have the original tempo files archived too) so I'm used to forgetting how much difference the tempo a remixer chooses can have. Diablo Traxx Collective raises the tempo and gives this a weird British hard trance groove. (Diablo Traxx Collective are actually two Aussies that live in London.) I don't mind that bouncy British style, but I prefer it on songs that already have that vibe to start with, because in general I prefer the heavier, darker German-style hard trance to the bouncier, bright and polite British style.
Alex Mac & Zeebra Kid vs Nicky D Remix—another fast-paced British sounding (and indeed British) remix. It has that kind of British acid sound to it heavily infused, not unlike something that Choci would have made in the mid to late 90s from the acid trancecore kind of sound that was going on then. The crowd noises added after the drop to the break with the soaring synthline let you know what kind of track you're listening to.
Yoshi Remix—I actually confused Yoshi with Yoji for a long time, but I realize now that this is a totally different artist remixing here! Still, it's a competent mix with that Aussie style that sounds like it could have come straight off the barbie with Steve Hill and Co., but it does get lost in the shuffle a bit because there are so many good versions of this song.
The 10th Anniversary release had all of the remixes previously released, and then added several more:
Nomad Remix—the best one, no doubt. Super intense, and the added acid line is very welcome.
Liam Wilson Remix—I'm a little bit ambivalent on Liam Wilson, although he seems to have gone through a phase where he was a big-time name. He adds an interesting vocal track, but it's not one of my favorites. Kinda housey.
Philippe Rochard Remix—famous as more of a hardstyle artist, and this is a hardstyle remix, mostly. Although I also really like a lot of hardstyle, I don't know how well I like converting hard trance tracks into hardstyle ones—or vice versa, for that matter.
A couple of other remixes have been released as one-offs since then.
Madwave Remix—Madwave is a newer Swiss artist, and a big part of what he's doing is remixing some older classic tracks. They're pretty good, but not the best, especially considering the large number of remixes to compare it to. Compared to the best versions, it's a bit low energy too, for that matter.
Kriess Guyte Remix—a British guy, who released it through Grotesque Records, who have also made a name for themselves by releasing newer remixes of older tracks. Most of his stuff is more tech trance or psy trance, and this veers somewhat into that territory sometimes.
Dermot Bateman Bootleg—another really great one by an Irish remixer. He seems to straddle the lines between techno, tech trance and hard trance, but those are all fairly closely related anyway. I kinda like the tech trance sound, but I see it as more like a subtle variation on hard trance rather than something that's really super unique. (Then again, all of these various styles are subtle enough that people who are new to EDM probably can't really perceive them at all.)
As always, I take my favorite hard EDM tracks and normalize their tempo to 150 bpm so that they can more easily be played back to back to back. Plus, many of the trance tracks are a little bit too slow, especially if they're a little older (but not too old; then they're too fast!) For the more modern sound, which crystalized right around the turn of the millennium, 150 is the perfect tempo to give them that really hard intensity.
