Tesla and Waymo are continuing to increase their presence in the Texas capital which has been a hub for driverless car experimentation. While America is somewhat behind China in the implementation of a revolution in auto mobility, we are seeing some changes here.
What I think will be most important here is that the companies have affordable rides for customers of every stripe in the city and other places. Safety is important but we also need to have people willing to take risks so that we become less reliant on cars and help to improve our urban mobility in this era of change. Hopefully, these rollouts are smooth and we are able to enjoy transport without the baggage that so often made our lives too chaotic. We may have a chance to be more creative and conscious of each other as humans if we can just take our hands off the wheels and enjoy our cities.
Outlander: Blood of My Blood is going to be released on Starz on August 8th, and it will be a prequel to the time travel romance series, Outlander. The reason why I was attracted to this series is because of my love for history and romance combining together. The main character, Claire, is not a loudmouth but someone who has great maturity which is often missing in many characters in cinema now. The series is an oddity among series in that it is historical series spanning many centuries and somehow it manages to get renewed multiple times without not having lost its vigor. Unlike Game of Thrones, Outlander hasn’t really given up on its original vision that began in Season 1.
Can Outlander Blood of My Blood be its own series?
The series is a prequel, taking place in the early 1710s vs the 1740s of the original series. The modern era in the series is also taking place in World War I vs the immediate post-war era of World War II in the original series.
Outlander: Blood of my Blood is looking like it is going to be great addition to the story of the series but can it really stand on its own?
There are always issues with prequels. One issue is that they have to tie into the existing canon, and this can cause problems for fans of the previous stories.
Outlander: Blood of my Blood seems to have a good area to start with. It is staying true to its own previous stories, rather than making changes which would alienate the Outlander book readers and the ones who have watched the TV series.
In my opinion, the series can stand on its own but it is going to have to be coherent and have good writing and acting just as any other production would require.
Outlander: Blood of my Blood will get stronger when it goes to the 1st Jacobite Uprising.
The historical background of the Outlander series which is the Jacobite struggle will have an impact on the narrative on this story.
We shall see how the series does when it released but for now, the most important aspect for the early seasons is how they link up the three Jacobite Risings in the narrative here.
Battlefield 6 has officially revealed its multiplayer mode. According to the article below by Mp1s.com which was written by James Lara, there are nine maps in the game.
The maps generally speaking more urban than many of the classic Battlefield games. The original game, Battlefield 1942 often took place on sparsely populated farmlands and Pacific Islands. Such map types seem to be giving way to sprawling cities and towns where the physics engine can be implemented to its full glory. The destruction of buildings is still a remarkable feat of software engineering, giving the maps a greater vitality which was missing in the older games.
My favorite inclusion in this map is the map taking place in Tajikistan, Liberation Peak.
I have always been a lover of mountains and snowy peaks in Central Asia.
There is something remarkable about the snowy passes and the atmosphere in these places. This is one of the reasons Monte Grappa in Battlefield 1 was one of my favorite maps. The rustic and rural nature of it, nestled in the mountains is an incredible delight to behold when playing with other people. I hope that Liberation Peak has that same charm here.
What other previous maps in the Battlefield series can we compare this to?
Dragon Valley in Battlefield 2 comes to mind. That map took place in a fictional valley in China and was very vertical map, extending from a US carrier to Chinese bases.
I did not play much of the modern Battlefield games until Battlefield 1, so these are the references that I have.
Liberation Peak will probably not be one of the most popular maps in the game. I believe that title will go to the Siege of Cairo. The Siege of Cairo map as we have seen is a very tight map that focuses on Close-Quarter combat over the expansive maps we have seen. It is very similar to Amiens in Battlefield 1. The origin of such preference for such map types stems from the popular Strike at Karkand map in Battlefield 2. However, that map was more expansive than many of these modern urban maps. Strike at Karkand had a staging area for the US Marines and also a residential section, a suburb, and industrial section. Siege of Cairo seems to be going on all out on inner city battles not a battle for an entire city area. Such a distinction shows how the developers have changed in their view of the maps in Battlefield games.
Maps such Zatar Wetlands are oddities to some players as they tend to focus on huge maps with small villages over expansive urban areas. Liberation Peak from what I have seen of the Pre-Alpha video uploaded by Chinese and Western users seem to indicate a map which is in a valley, allowing for focus on the map. Hopefully that will allow it to have more popularity than many other “black horse” maps that were very common in the franchise before Battlefield 3 reset the tone and design of the series.
Liberation Peak will probably be one of the less popular maps in the game. It has that niche appeal to it. However, this is probably based on my experience of the classic Battlefield games. In that era, before Battlefield 3, many maps on servers would be repeated many times. Such map rotation is more common in the modern Battlefield games where city maps do not take up all the play time of players now.
What is great however, is that EA is trying to put some effort into the maps. Based on what I have seen, Liberation Peak is going to be one of their standout maps in the sense of its expansive scale.
What is important however, regardless of which map is popular or not is whether the maps are well made. An issue many maps in Battlefield tend to have is that they tend to be too big and players feel like they are wasting too much effort to move around. I think that Battlefield 6 is a little light on the maps in comparison to the older games, but I think it will be a great addition to the series.
When the Open Beta opens up, we shall see whether the game meets up to the hype that has been building around this game. Battlefield 6 looks like it is going to be a big release this year and competing with the FPS titan of Call of Duty. I am betting that it is going to be a tight battle between the both of them for the wallets of gamers.
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