Tervell

under $20k that isn't a rust bucket POS

huh, then I guess the 5-15k € prices I was seeing for Volvo Laplanders (the name of the civilian model) aren't that high, that's 6-17.5k $ (although I'm assuming these Volvos can't be in particularly good condition either, they're old trucks - I saw a few for 20k €, and one even 40k, so those might be better-preserved ones; plus, most of these are in Europe so you'd have to pay more for the importing itself)

there are actually civilian versions of these too

although I don't think you can actually buy one for a reasonable price these days, since they've got that vintage collector's value

The Austrians did have actual proper APCs too... but those are also pretty cramped:

The proliferation of bullpups was indeed largely informed by the needs of mechanized infantry - having long rifles was fine back when everyone marched with the rifle slung over, but widespread mechanization changes the game (and a lot of Western vehicles of the period aren't anywhere near as spacious as people imagine when they whine about how Soviet stuff sucks - this is a BMP-2 compared to a German Marder for example, the Marder is bigger but not by that much:

and here's a Swedish APC:

)

Modern APCs/IFVs solve this problem by just... being ridiculously big and heavy (the one on the left here weights as much as a T-55 tank!)

the Germans actually even converted MG42s to the MG3 standard, there's guns with the original 42 markings literally crossed out:

but tbf, if you have the guns and the manufacturing lines set up, you might as well use them - the Yugoslavs also used MG-42s, both captured and their own manufactured ones:

plus StG-44s:

the Czechoslovaks inherited half-track tooling (since the Nazis had converted tank factories in Czechia to making their own models), so they kept making them for a while:

the Soviets seized the V-2 manufacturing facilities and kept making them under a new name:

and various other examples

A much greater sin than keeping the aesthetics of some guns is keeping the actual guys who ran the war

this Calico is pretty cool:

and while not exactly wood, I feel like bakelite also brings a similar vibe (and it's actually decently old, going back to the 1910s), and there's a bunch of cool-looking Soviet prototypes making extensive use of it:

This is what Starfield's purported "NASApunk" could have been if Bethesda actually had any aesthetic sensibilities...

Ah, the Armscor M1600. Honestly, that one doesn't look that much like a real M16, but it's still neat

real "'80s villain henchman gun" kind of vibe, like the Muzzlite and some other polymer guns from that time

I don't think so, the lower receiver has 5.56 on it. It's just with some custom-made wooden furniture

There's actually 4 male bartenders in the game, all black, and each one with a different voice actor - an Irish guy (the Lucky Money club one you linked, although I definitely feel like he's supposed to be doing an Australian accent), one actual black guy (the Paris hotel one you linked), a French guy (a different Paris bartender), and a Chinese guy.

I assume they just had this one character model and reused it - the game definitely does this a bunch. But this one's just one of the most blatant examples because all of these characters have dialogue and they're all obviously different voices.

All bartenders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eep0NhA1vfM

I, uh... what even is this article? "Deus ex devs" in this case is... two - a level designer, and Spector, who's the producer and director, but, you know...

Nothing from the design lead, Harvey Smith (who in Spector's own words, "functioned more as a co-director", and would later work on the Dishonored games, which pretty obviously have plenty of politics going on), or the writer, Sheldon Pacotti? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/deus-ex-at-20-the-oral-history-of-a-pivotal-pc-game

Even Warren in this article I feel is being misinterpreted

"I'm a big believer that if you want to make a statement, you should make a movie or write a book," Spector told PCG. "What I thought about things didn't matter in Deus Ex. What I think is the right future for humanity is irrelevant. It's all about what each player thinks."

"what I thought doesn't matter" doesn't mean "I didn't put any of my views in the work" - it means "you, as the player, are free to ignore my views and come to your own conclusions". Have we sunk so deep into media literacy discourse now that "a work can have multiple interpretations" is something we're supposed to be mad about? The sentiment "if you want to make a statement, you should make a movie or write a book" isn't "games can't be political" - it's "games, as an interactive medium, are less suited to communicating a clear message". Which is, you know, true - the ability of players to interact with the world obviously throws a wrench in your ability to deliver a story. The "solution" to this in the AAA space has historically been to just... give up on actually looking into new methods to write narratives that take into account interactivity, and start making movies with gameplay segments interspersed between the scenes. Which I guess has worked out pretty well given all the TV adaptions, if what you're looking for in your artistic work is prestige and not, you know, actual art.

Spector says he didn't want "to tell them the state of the world, I wanted them to act and see the state of the world that resulted from their choices,"

This isn't in any way incompatible with the game being political - if anything, an effective political message is exactly one which shows you the consequences of a political action. Like, the end of the game is literally you making an ideological decision about the future of the world, with the final level constantly having characters calling in to exposit their personal ideology and try to convince you of it! It's clunky, sure, but it's obviously political.

Deus Ex, I'd argue, is fundamentally a pretty liberal game at its core in spite of the radicalism of its characters and factions. Its central politics are contained in the immortal JC Denton line "When due process fails us, we really do live in a world of terror."

Okay, now this is just straight up making me feel like I'm being gaslit. JC Denton the character is a naive liberal - the game, on numerous occasions, offers counterpoints to him. Him standing in front of a godlike AI, with full knowledge of the global conspiracy running everything, and saying "we just have to :vote: the Illuminati out" isn't supposed to be him being correct. The due process line is literally at the start of the game, and is a response to another UNATCO agent arguing that the agency should just shoot people on sight - the whole plot of the 1st section of the game is JC coming in as, again, a naive lib, one who genuinely believes law enforcement is doing good, and being repeatedly shown that most of his fellow law enforcers are bloodthirsty murderers, culminating in him betraying the organization. There's one character who expresses a reformist view and that "the only way to save the agency is for the good people to stay" - he is promptly kicked out of the agency and joins the resistance.

I guess we're doing "if a protagonist says it, it must mean the author endorses the viewpoint" again.

This is also an area where Deus Ex is pretty interesting, with regards to the whole player choice thing - you mostly don't get to choose JC's ideology in dialogue. You can choose it to some extent via your in-game actions, but JC mostly remains set - as, indeed, a lib. It is through dialogue with other characters that opposing viewpoints are presented - JC will try to argue, usually not very successfully. There is no "naive lib" ending - the closest is the Illuminati ending, described as "essentially 20th-century capitalism: a corporate elite protected by laws and tax-codes", and which ends with nefarious music over the main Illuminati guy saying "this time we will do it right", promptly followed by

This channel has some other full concerts uploaded, so maybe a full version of this would be uploaded later? Or maybe this is just all they recorded, not sure.

The US doesn't care about traditional gun based artillery

Which is why they're fielding 1500 M109 Paladins (admittedly mostly built during the Cold War, but still, so were the Abramses), with hundreds more on the way, and are on their 4th program to replace it? (I guess you could interpret the failure of those programs as it not being considered that important, but still, seems pretty wasteful even by American standards).

And like, surely the pre-eminent imperial hegemon can afford to do two thing at once? Even if artillery isn't that important, they can still make more than a couple days' consumption, just in case? The Ukraine war is exactly demonstrating the importance of deep strategic stockpiles.

These repeated procurement issues are showing rot within the US MIC - rot which also affects the airpower you're talking about, the capacity to produce planes and spare parts for them, to produce bombs, to supply fuel. I guess we could assume that it's just the ground branch that's getting screwed over, and everything's looking up for the airforce... but why would we assume that? What about the state of US industry would justify that viewpoint?

Essentially, why have artillery when you have this

Because there's obviously a massive cost differential between these two solutions? Delivering ordnance via plane, precisely-guided ordnance too, is substantially more expensive. Airpower cannot necessarily sustain such large volumes of fire - the '91 & '03 Iraq wars both involved months of preparation, of moving assets into place, stockpiling fuel and munitions, unopposed. Conversely, the Libya and anti-ISIS Iraq campaigns didn't have as much stockpiling going on, and both ended up with munition shortages and bombing having to be paused.

These two technologies do not compete with one another, they complement each other - artillery for mass, airpower for precision and range. The NATO argument has been that mass doesn't matter if you have enough precision/performance - but does that actually hold up? Has NATO actually successfully used overwhelming technological superiority to thoroughly defeat someone? Of course the classic argument here is the 2003 Iraq War - which is predicated on arbitrarily separating the "proper" war from the counter-insurgency that followed, just drawing a line in the sand and saying "Well, I won - this other thing that followed directly after and went horribly? Completely separate thing, no connection to previous events whatsoever".

how many missile launchers (and other targets) did Israel take out in Iran, using this class of SDB/SPICE 250, along with UCAVs and Mossad assets with ATGMs and FPV drones, without firing a single artillery shell? Visually verified numbers on missile launchers alone, excluding duplicates and decoys, are around 60, actual numbers likely higher.

And how much did it cost them? If Israel was ostensibly able to keep freely flying over Iran and bombing whatever they want... why did they accept a ceasefire? How much munitions did they burn through, how much damage did they themselves sustain (we probably won't know for some time due to censorship)? Was it worth it?

And the situation there is obviously different - artillery doesn't play a role here, because this is fighting between countries that don't even border one another. Airpower is obviously a more relevant factor here due to the range - but airpower doesn't win wars. Was Iran defeated? Even Iraq, while it certainly sustained damage in '91, was only properly destroyed in '03 - with a full-scale ground invasion. The Libya and anti-ISIS campaigns both needed militias actually on the ground (and in the Iraq case, whatever still functioning Iraqi army units that could be thrown together) to achieve something. The Syrian rebels weren't defeated by airpower - the Syrian army needed to actually be on the ground fighting, and in the offensive last year, Russian airpower didn't stop the rebels - with the Syrian state collapsing and the army giving up, HTS could just keep waltzing in city after city, even if they were getting bombed quite a bit.

Airpower can certainly inflict heavy damage and soften the enemy up for the eventual ground force - but that ground force still needs to come in at some point in order to actually achieve anything strategically. And they'll need artillery - because airpower by itself cannot deliver and keep delivering for months the amount of firepower necessary for a real campaign.

if they could get air superiority near Kyiv and bomb it every day with Su-34s they would

but... they are bombing Kiev, and many other targets across Ukraine quite regularly - just with drones and missiles instead. Would Su-34s do that much more damage? Did Israel do that much more to Iran than Russia has been able to do to Ukraine?

if they could do a NATO style combined arms maneuver offensive they would, but they tried that in the summer of 2023 and failed, they don't have the air assets for that

Ah, the classic "it's only NATO tactics is it's from the Náto region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling combined arms" - maybe tactics that are completely dependent on highly expensive assets like this are bad, and the fact that Western advisors didn't have any alternative approaches to offer is an indictment of them and the inflexibility of their doctrine?

Ukraine is a unique situation and this does not apply to a hypothetical US-Russia conflict, or a NATO-Russia conflict

How is the Ukraine conflict not applicable to a NATO-Russia conflict? Like, what? For a US-Russia conflict sure, those are countries separated by an ocean, but fighting across the plains of Europe is obviously relevant for NATO-Russia?!

Like, I don't disagree that airpower is important, and SEAD/DEAD is important and Russia has deficiencies in that area - but to dismiss the entire concept of artillery with "eh, we'll just bomb them with planes" is just... baffling to me.

Turns out, deindustrialization is actually pretty devastating, and real economies aren't just a video game where you build some extra factories and start pumping out gear - you lose personnel, you lose institutional knowledge (I had a post last year about how everyone who understood the ICBMs is apparently dead now - critical support to the boomers for being egotistic assholes and not bothering to pass on the technical knowledge necessary to keep the empire's war machine functioning, I guess), you lose established supply chains (as seen here with them having to import the explosives used in the shells - you'd think the US would, you know, be able to actually make those at home?), and that's damage that can't be undone by just electing a "based" guy who'll totally press the big red ReIndustrialize button sitting in the Oval Office

It's the "halted work on UAPL 3 “on its own accord,”" part here that really gets me, too, imagine not only repeatedly failing to meet your production targets, but straight up telling your boss that you're just going to stop working on a major part of the project you were assigned. And like, at a normal job you might get fired, but this is national defense! And you just get a strongly-worded letter, instead of, you know, being prosecuted for treason and having your fancy (barely functional) factory nationalized