I absolutely loved JC2 and JC3 with more than 500 hours in each! Despite the author's thoughts that the games were a buggy mess, I feel like I never noticed the bugs in JC2 and the very literal road bumps in JC3 were only problem when I was doing laps around the first island out of boredom.
I could never quite put my finger on why the large island felt so... empty? in the north, but it being canceled for most of the development cycle is an insight I never thought I'd have, so thank you very much for the insight.
The volumetric terrain of JC3 was an awesome improvement on JC2, with the second island being very for the terrain and vertical bases.
I tried JC4 and it was disappointing... It never clicked with me and (just like the author) I felt it was worse than JC3 in almost every way.
Major thanks to the author for the blog post, growing up and working in software I really appreciate the perspective and both Avalanche studio and the author for their work on these two awesome and timeless games. Despite the apparent hell of development, playing it always felt magical to me (maybe not the car handling in JC2 but I digress) <3
This is just plain wrong or a terrible misinterpretation...
> central banks
What are you trying to say here? Each member state has a central bank. They are independent from, coordinated by, the ECB. Each central bank assumes the responsibility of regulating the member state's banks, with the ECB paying close attention to system-critical banks.
The US also has a central bank, singular, the Fed.
What's your point?
> no local culture, blur national and ethnic identities
Have you been to Europe? Each country has it's own, completely distinct culture based on the nation's historic identity. Hint: you know when you're crossing borders (the language usually changes).