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 Horizon Zero Dawn is an ARPG made by Guerilla Games, a 1st party Sony studio. It was first teased at E3 2015. It released in February 2017, and the DLC The Frozen Wilds came out that November. It's one of the best releases that year and one of the best games on the console. To date it's sold over 10 million copies. Fill me in, what's this game about? HZD is set in a post-post apocalyptic world. The very bad thing happened a long time ago, nobody knows what it was. The technology is primitive, however, animal-like robots roam the land. The humans hunt them for materials, and fashion armor and weapons from them. There are signs of old civilization everywhere, but no explanations. Then one day a sealed bunker barfs up a random baby and things get set in motion. Uhh, what? Don't think too hard about it. Pretty much everything does get explained, and in a coherent way. There's lots of lore to be found in HZD and piecing together what happened is one of the joys of the game. Crazy robot dinosaurs. Really. Really. HZD probably shouldn't exist as a game. It was more or less reverse-engineered from a brainstorming session Guerilla had all of their employees do. After Killzone they wanted to do a new IP but didn't have any ideas. So they made everyone do a short presentation. Basically throwing poo poo at the wall to see what sticks. One of them was "robot dinosaurs" more or less. No plot, no gameplay ideas, just robot dinosaurs. People liked the idea but weren't sure where to go with it. Another project got pushed to the fore and HZD was kind of left behind. However, when Guerilla was making their pitch to Sony they offered HZD as a possible option as well. More people were excited about robot dinosaurs than whatever else they came up with and so HZD was born. Killzone guys did this? Yep, a studio known for tightly linear FPSs decided to do an open world RPG and realized they knew absolutely nothing about making one. Instead of blundering forward, they actually went out and recruited people with experience to help them. They prototyped a game and started playing it over and over. Tweak something here, change this there. If something worked they kept it, if it didn't they'd go in another direction. They hired people to design quests which were lacking in the KZ games. And they brought in a writer who had a lot of experience with post-apocalyptic RPG settings. John Gonzales, who wrote Fallout: NV which is still considered to be the pinnacle of the series. He was able to stitch together a compelling narrative tying all the gameplay elements together. Unlike a lot of studios, they knew when they were in over their heads and didn't let pride get in the way of making the best game possible. In addition they always intended to have a female lead which caused some people to say the game would never be profitable because nobody would play as a girl. Those idiots were wrong and Aloy kicks rear end. TED talk aside, I heard this game has bad VA and animation. Just a bit before the game released, some footage got leaked. Faces did look kinda weird and you were sure the guy poo poo his pants he was acting so hard. If you read the Games thread from the beginning there are some baaad reactions to it. Except it was only a short clip and taken out of context. In-game it makes a lot more sense. I agree that while the faces are wonderfully detailed some of the talking animations are a bit strange. Still I've seen lots worse in a AAA game. Since it's a 1st party game for Sony, they were able to focus entirely on the PS4 architecture and the result is beautiful. Even now this is one of the prettiest games I've ever played. I'm glad I have a 4k tv to play it on. Aloy is voiced by Ashly Burch who has been in a lot of good videogames and also Borderlands. The other primary characters are really well done, too. The Decima engine they created for KZ Shadowfall was adapted to this game. It was also used for Death Stranding, another game with gorgeous visuals. Thanks to that, HZD will be seeing a release on PC later this year. FAR Out. I've recorded the video at 1080p, which is the maximum output of the PS4's onboard recorder. Yep, I'm doing this one like I did DAI, but since then they've upped the maximum time you can record to an hour, so we'll see less chunks of video go missing. Well, hopefully. I'm still an idiot and accidents can happen.  NO SPOILERS WHATSOEVER, not even in tags. There's some poo poo coming and we don't want it ruined. Don't make me call the LP police on you or make you an outcast. Don't worry, when the time comes we will sing the song of our people.This will be a fairly comprehensive playthrough, though there's no way in hell I'm gonna get all the sidequests. I'll do the ones that matter and maybe some others if they're interesting or funny. I'll be getting all the collectibles. We'll see how frequently I can barf out updates, I have recorded a fair buffer of footage so I'm not playing and then immediately editing which is kind of a pain in the rear end. We'll be doing the DLC as well, that will be blind for me. I got it when it released, played maybe an hour or two and then got distracted by something else, possibly the ME3 LP. From all accounts it's very good, albeit with the difficulty cranked up to 11. For that reason I'll tackle it later on in the LP. Updates Don't tell mom the babysitter's an outcast (post) The most popular unpopular person (post) Checklist checked (post) School's out forever (post) Proving yourself (post) Mountain mama (post) Wide open spaces (post) This one time at Bandit Camp (post) how is robbo formed (post) Shitshow rodeo (post) Big bada boom (post) Now serving #227 (post) Mistakes were made (post) All roads lead to AAAAAA (post) Bright lights, big city (post) Crab Hooey (post) Rho Rho your boat (post) Running Erend's (post) Tallneck murderdeck (post) Fruit Loops (post) Murderthon for charity (post) Banuk of the North (post) gently caress whoever wrote this (post) gently caress whoever wrote this twice (post) Rollin' Olin (post) Elisabet your rear end (post) F_ _ _ / _ e _ / F_ _ _ (post) Lodging a complaint (post) Why am I doing this again? (post) A pretty, great state (post) Village people (post) I hear dead people (post) Experiencing technical difficulties (post) SubponticatePoster fucked around with this message at 02:21 on Jul 11, 2021 |
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May 28, 2020 05:54
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Reserved.
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May 28, 2020 05:54
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Don't tell mom the babysitter's an outcast Game stars with a long custcene. We meet Rost who is a badass, and a chubby baldish babby. It's babby's naming day and Rost has to take a long hike to the top of the mountain. Along the way we get some exposition on the world and where things stand now. Up top there's a Matriarch, one of the Nora's most important people. She is a smartass and I love her. Even though Rost and babby are outcasts and not supposed to interact with tribe members Matriarch Teersa not only speaks to them but blesses the child and then the rest of the Matriarchs show up and freak the gently caress out. Aloy is "motherless" and called a curse. But Rost knows his duty. Fast forward 6 years. Aloy is now, well, 6 years old. She doesn't really get the whole outcast thing (which isn't surprising for a 6 year old, who understands complicated politics at that age?) and tries to interact with some Nora out gathering berries. They treat her like a leper with bad flatulence and she runs away upset until she falls down a big fuckoff hole. This is the Metal World, created by the Old Ones. These places are off limits to Nora. Then she stumbles across a corpse with a weird triangle thing stuck to its head. Warnings be damned she does the same and it's basically an AR device. She can see things no one else can and interact with things in the Metal World. Finding her way out Rost tries to take it from her but then relents. Maybe because she doesn't have anything else. No mother, no tribe, no friends. Rost tells her he's going to teach her to hunt. Then we get some more tutorial gameplay; learning about gathering plants, distracting machines, crafting and so on. There's a Nora teenager parkouring all over the mountainside and he actually acknowledges them which is a no-no. Later on he falls off the mountain into a pile of robits. This is bad but Aloy can use her Focus to see the paths of the machines and leads him to safety. Rost realizes that Aloy hasn't been playing with imaginary friends. After another lovely confrontation with lovely tribal folks Aloy demands to know why she's outcast and who her mother was. Rost can't tell her, but if she runs in the proving when she's a young adult, she can not only be accepted into the tribe but will be granted a single wish if she wins. So we then have a training montage and Aloy does a kickflip into her late teens. At this point the game opens up and we're able to do more than skulk around in the weeds. We'll still be doing a lot of that, but now we get to kill poo poo 
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May 28, 2020 05:55
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Holy crap yay!
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May 28, 2020 06:25
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Ground zero for an LP for one of my favorite PS4 games,from one of my favorite LPers?  But yeah, looking forwards to finally seeing a proper LP of this game from somebody who isn't a screeching face-cam. VolticSurge fucked around with this message at 11:21 on May 28, 2020 |
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May 28, 2020 07:14
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Just got this game 10 weeks ago and now I love 100%ing it (or almost, some challenges are difficult) over and over again. Or watching others come close to doing it. I will be watching, SP. Enjoy! Personal Fan Beliefs- The device our heroine finds and uses is some sort of future smartphone (though if they get this far with technology in the time frame the game uses, I will be very surprised) per the developers. It's probably solar powered and self-recharging, maintained by a smart but not self-aware AI- otherwise how would it survive all these centuries? Lucky the last user died in a spot that gets some good sun! I also think the last user was a police officer (look closely, their clothing is a blue uniform), hence the tactical and forensic apps we make use of in the game. And this device is the reason our heroine can read and think critically so well compared to a lot of other people around her- consider that she developed this by her own volition through her childhood and you learn a lot about her determination! The game also gets kudos for creating choices where it's worthwhile to go back and see alternate actions- all have effects in the future game. achtungnight fucked around with this message at 08:09 on May 28, 2020 |
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May 28, 2020 07:22
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VolticSurge posted:looking forwards to finally seeing a proper LP of this game from somebody who isn't a screeching face-cam. Seconded, I gave up trying to find a good LP of this that wasn't done by someone with the spatial awareness of a grapefruit
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May 28, 2020 07:42
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Don't have a PS4 but I sure have heard about this game a lot.
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May 28, 2020 07:51
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Da_Higg posted:Seconded, I gave up trying to find a good LP of this that wasn't done by someone with the spatial awareness of a grapefruit This is a really good game and I'm looking forward to showing it off. I'll even pop platinum during this run through; I'm missing 1 trophy. Base game anyway, I know the DLC has its own. EponymousMrYar posted:Don't have a PS4 but I sure have heard about this game a lot.
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May 28, 2020 14:35
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Another SubponicatePoster LP? This ought to be fun.
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May 28, 2020 14:41
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Yay, a new SubponicatePoster LP! IŽve been waiting for this since the end of the Mass Effect trilogy LP! I might even reinstall this again and try to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do.
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May 28, 2020 15:13
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This game looks beautiful but I kept getting an uncanny valley feeling looking at kid Aloy's face. Didn't have the problem with Rost or adult Aloy though
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May 28, 2020 15:43
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I enjoyed this game a lot but got interrupted while playing it a while ago. No idea where I am or what's going on anymore, so this is going to be a really good way to catch up and get back to playing it. Looking forward to this.
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May 28, 2020 15:51
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Oh boy, this game is amazing. From a gameplay perspective, as you learn to play the game you go from frail hunter girl to "death, dismantler of robo-dinosaurs" and it's simply a fantastic sensation. SubponticatePoster posted:Those idiots were wrong and Aloy kicks rear end. Aloy is the absolute best and Rost is a Good Dad.
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May 28, 2020 15:55
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Thanks guys  Slaan posted:This game looks beautiful but I kept getting an uncanny valley feeling looking at kid Aloy's face. Didn't have the problem with Rost or adult Aloy though
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May 28, 2020 16:35
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A friend of mine spoke very highly of this game, I'm looking forward to watching this. This is more the kind of post-apoc I like, where it's more a backdrop for the setting, instead of "look how easily society collapses because humans suck" that I see at least hints of in most of them.Omobono posted:Rost is a Good Dad. I have some issues with how he's been parenting in this video, but I certainly think he's doing his damndest, and is certainly a Good Guy. I am concerned for the motivating death that I assume he will suffer before the first act is out, but I'm perfectly willing to be wrong. In fact, game, please subvert that expectation, I'd be happy to see you do it.
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May 28, 2020 17:40
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You forgot to mention that Horizon Zero Dawn has a planned PC port. Summer 2020
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May 28, 2020 17:54
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Flair posted:You forgot to mention that Horizon Zero Dawn has a planned PC port. SubponticatePoster posted:Thanks to that, HZD will be seeing a release on PC later this year. 
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May 28, 2020 18:00
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I wish they ported this to PC much sooner. I bought it but bounced off it repeatedly because I can't play a game that's 90% about precision shooting on a controller.
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May 28, 2020 18:16
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It's a first party Sony game, not surprising it hasn't been ported. If it wasn't for Death Stranding using the engine and needing to make it run on PC I doubt it would've gotten a port at all.
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May 28, 2020 18:24
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I love how basically the two things which have apparently survived the complete destruction of human society intact are a little heads up display made of super advanced tech...and the standardised colour coding for the rings on archery targets.
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May 28, 2020 18:41
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D'oh I did not read that part 
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May 28, 2020 18:41
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I really liked HZD, despite its stupid name. Its version of the post apocalypse is so much more interesting than the standard Rusty America. I gave up on hoovering up all the collectables though; it'll be cool to see what I missed.
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May 28, 2020 18:51
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I always wondered where that robot dinosaur thing came from in another game that will come out to PC soon. It was the most confusing thing. Post-apoc traveling and catching a giant dinosaur in the corner of your eye.
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May 28, 2020 19:04
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Scalding Coffee posted:I always wondered where that robot dinosaur thing came from in another game that will come out to PC soon. It was the most confusing thing.
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May 28, 2020 19:07
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Arrrgh. Just when I thought I had nothing to do except play Xenoblade Chronicles for the next few days. Thanks anyway!
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May 28, 2020 20:49
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Well, I think Rost is a terrible father. Going up the mountain with a bairn and not giving it a cap - the wee girl's ears would've frozen off!
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May 28, 2020 22:39
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SubponticatePoster posted:I hope too much hasn't been ruined for you. It's an extremely well-crafted and written game. I'm in the Alfred Hitchcock school of suspense vs. shock so 'ruined' and 'well-crafted/written' are pretty much an oxymoron to me regardless  Reveilled posted:I love how basically the two things which have apparently survived the complete destruction of human society intact are a little heads up display made of super advanced tech...and the standardised colour coding for the rings on archery targets. Don't forget silly politics!
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May 28, 2020 23:48
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This game legitimately has one of the best openings in video game history imo.
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May 29, 2020 01:18
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Sindai posted:I wish they ported this to PC much sooner. I bought it but bounced off it repeatedly because I can't play a game that's 90% about precision shooting on a controller. ask me about playing every Killzone game repeatedly and on the hardest difficulties  Lookong forward to watching all of this! I've had a soft spot for Guerrilla Games' output for a long time. Played all their early titles but I never made the jump to owning a PS4, so I missed HZD entirely. Here's hoping we find a bunch of Killzone Easter Eggs and it turns out this planet is a post-apocalyptic Vekta.
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May 29, 2020 02:12
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It's been just long enough that I've forgotten a lot of the game. I'm looking forward to reliving it!
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May 29, 2020 18:37
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I audibly said "yay, subponticate poster" when I saw this pop up despite the fact I've: 1) Already watched a 50+ episode comprehensive LP of this game 2) Possibly never said 'yay' out loud before Looking forward to seeing someone else's take on an what seemed like an excellent open world game, with an excellently written lead character..
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May 29, 2020 19:44
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The most popular unpopular person This is what happens when a) I have a bunch of footage already recorded and b) I'm not burned out after LPing for 4 years straight - I produce updates more than once every 2 weeks! We get control of Aloy and immediately get a bunch of sidequests dumped on us. Kill some stuff, go shopping, find people etc. For Aloy being an outcast everybody really wants to talk to her. Except Odd Grata, who rules-lawyers herself into getting what she wants. We see some combat, by which I mean I mostly hide in the bushes and then stab things when they get near. This is probably how you'll play your first time through. Our bow isn't all that great yet and we don't have some of the better skills to use it. Even so I'm being kinda overly cautious. Upside is we get a bit more xp for the stealth kill. We'll see things start to pick up in a bit. We have the run of Mother's Embrace, the actual game world map is fuckin' huge but locked off to us for now.
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May 30, 2020 00:04
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Oh hell yes, you posted this like six minutes before I finished watching episode 1!
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May 30, 2020 00:12
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The game gets points for realistic side quests that also accomplish world building better than a lot of similar games I've seen. It really hit me how much the world has changed in this game when I saw that wild pigs no longer behave aggressively and now flee in fear at any threat.
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May 30, 2020 02:38
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I canŽt really blame Subponticate for going overly careful in the beginning since your first bow sucks horrible balls but once you get a few skills and the next level of bow youŽll be capping robodinos like nobodies business.
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May 30, 2020 11:02
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Sylphosaurus posted:I canŽt really blame Subponticate for going overly careful in the beginning since your first bow sucks horrible balls but once you get a few skills and the next level of bow youŽll be capping robodinos like nobodies business. Also achtungnight has volunteered to post some alternate paths for quests and dialogue - this game is big enough without trying to do multiple-choice stuff. So you'll get to see more of the game. Thanks, AN!
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May 31, 2020 15:35
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I really hate this society. This is not a criticism of the game, rather a compliment. I'm assuming there's some sort of reason that's been grandfathered in for the whole "Outcast" thing, but it's really pissing me off already. I mean, it's clearly supposed to, but still...SubponticatePoster posted:Also achtungnight has volunteered to post some alternate paths for quests and dialogue - this game is big enough without trying to do multiple-choice stuff. So you'll get to see more of the game. Thanks, AN! Awesome! Thanks indeed, achtungnight!  (why the gently caress is this "neckbeard"?)
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May 31, 2020 15:54
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SubponticatePoster posted:Also achtungnight has volunteered to post some alternate paths for quests and dialogue - this game is big enough without trying to do multiple-choice stuff. So you'll get to see more of the game. Thanks, AN! I am curious. Do have a certain approach planned how Aloy reacts to stuff in dialogue? Will there be
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May 31, 2020 19:17
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Do they say where things are taking place or is it a fantasy planet?
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May 31, 2020 20:17
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