Thanks to you too. But my PC is a laptop, so I'm not going to be doing any upgrades. I knew what I was doing. Portability is important to me, as is a touchscreen for drawing. I'm usually playing games like pillars eternity, caves of qud, and such. Nothing that needs powerful hardware.

Thanks for the detailed description. I'm on linux (bazzite) though, and my PC is a little on the older side, AND I have no dedicated GPU. I'm already pushing the CPU to the limit just to get a good FPS. This game is basically the upper limit of what I can run, so I'm not going to do anything that would add tasks to the CPU.

Holy batflaps this game needs a lot of storage!!! I have some mods installed (YAML stuff, biomes, etc.) And it's at 144 GB. I had to make space by removing some other games and cleaning house on the hard drive just to update it.

I love this game, but it is going to feel like Christmas when I finish it and uninstall it to make space.

It's good, but not amazing. Each of the 5 main fractions has It's own main quest line with 5 quests, and any given character can only do one of the lines. There isn't much dialog, and don't expect a giant tree of options and alternate endings in each line, but the writing is solid and the themes are varied and interesting. After the main quest line there is a DLC quest about rebuilding a town with some lackluster town-building mechanics. I ended up not finishing this with my first character, it was too tedious. It wasn't horrible either though, I just don't have that much free time.

There are lots of side quests spread over the land, but there is a lot of open space in this game, so you will end up referring to the fandom wiki in order to find some of them. The focus is more on exploration, survival, crafting, and optimization than a detailed and branching story.

Still Outward. I love this game, probably going to be playing it for a while to come. I want to try a flamethrower mage build next, or perhaps an archer/off-hand dagger build. There are still two entire regions I've not yet visited in 60+ hours of gameplay.

I only play solo, I don't have much time for gaming, and it's a pleasure to not have to consider others needs etc. for a little while.

Now that I know the mechanics better I have built a stronger character. I also used splitscreen to give my new character a few nice items from my first character, that makes solo a little easier and more fun.

I'm playing through Outward a second time. It is such a beautiful game, and I really enjoy some of the unique aspects of it like the lack of fast travel.

I'd say you should worry about it all you want beforehand, but make sure to go, and make sure to leave those thoughts at the entrance. These thoughts/emotions are there for a reason, but IMHO they are more useful for preparation, not for the event itself.

I sometimes even mime putting such intrusive thoughts into an imaginary box, locking it with a key, and setting it down somewhere, or tossing it over my shoulder. This sort of ritual helps me to really cement my intention of leaving something that I no longer need behind.

Also, having you wife with should be a great help, for obvious reasons. But really you are an adult, as long as you don't show up in a sailor moon costume I doubt if anyone will be paying much attention to you at all.

I don't think you are going to get much information here. I'm not trying to be condescending, but I read this post as "I have done zero research on this topic myself, please do it for me".

You will get a much better response if you first do some basic research yourself, and then come with more specific questions. I'd suggest you start with the device list from the OS you are looking at, and go from there.

Again, I'm not trying to be demeaning. I think it is great that you are looking to de-google your life, and I wish you all the success in this endeavour.

Dammit I meant Morrowind! I'm getting old.

The worst for me was elder scrolls: oblivion. I played it on xbox back when it came out. I played nothing else for about 18 months. I must have had thousands of hours by the time it got old.

I actually didn't even notice the link to the article. Oops. Thanks for pointing that out.