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35h in. Things that annoy me so far: - Jumping. This was much better done in Solasta. - Combat/ability/item UI. Ditto, better done in Solasta. - Inventory UI. Better done in PF:WotR. - Environmental effects and the imprecise character control. Constantly walking into fire, traps, toxic clouds, etc. Just lost a fight because I clicked to make a melee attacks, turns out character was 1mm too far, decided to take a detour through lava. - Destructible "sturdy" walls that give no indication of what stuff damages them. And sometimes the same attack does damage, sometimes not. Still a good game though.

yes, and no. I think BG3 lacks tools to make it smoother (you can't access inventory of characters not in your current party, nor level them up, and adding/removing characters is tedious). I think there is also a dissonance between narrative (group of independed individuals with their own agendas) and gameplay experience in singleplayers - main character, and mindless drones with story content at your disposal. I think that if there was a narrative reason for us to be in charge (like in traiditional Bioware RPGs) it would go down smoother. I see it as a side effect of coop design - as players we are not really designed to babysit the party and the game doesn't quite work if you play it like that. That said, I do like micromanaging my party! I am glad that Larian decided not to kill off spare party members like they did in D:OS2. I still might kill off Astarion. Everything he says just enforces me in belief that he is a danger to himself and everyone around him. Actually, so his Gale. And Laez. And maybe Shadowheart.

Dmitri Glukhovsky, the author behind Metro 2033 and 2034 novels, has been sentenced in absence to 8 years prison time for "Discrediting of Russian Army" by court in Moscow. Thankfully he has fled Russia more than a year ago, so for now he is safe. Also, his novels are not allowed to sell in Russia, due to his criticism of "SMO".

Well I've given it a solid chance. It's just not for me. The narrative doesn't pull me in, and that's really the most important thing to me. it did teach me something about preferences I have in games. I dont like dice rolls. I never played D&D growing up, which probably contributes to my dislike of the RNG checks. I find myself rolling high on checks I have no skills in, and failing checks I've dumped points into. Your strength has a limit, if you are weak, you aren't going to get lucky and become superman for a moment. I dont like 3D environments in isometric games. Be it RPG or strategy, I like a fixed camera and a pretty background. This one is completely new to me, but I think I prefer a tighter story, to one that is endlessly open. Give me choices to make, but I need some direction story wise. Lastly, and this is specific to BG3... are all the companions obnoxious? They all seem like they are larping as DnD characters. Anyway I'm glad for the success! Can never have enough CRPGs

I broke down and bought the game, downloading it now. Uhh I went to Nexus to check out the mods and was greeted with images of a dwarf phallus, a nude fairy, and a half-orc with a beeg hog. Beautiful.

Oh. Huh, well, that ended up being a lot more accurate than I thought it would be, even if it's not quite right. But...I'm just playing as Shadowheart, so I have no bloody idea what she would find trustworthy. I guess Shadowheart must like sickly goth girls? I ended up deciding that them big ol' half-elf ears needed to be just a little less...uh, prominent, so I went away from the ballerina buns. If it's supposed to be someone your PC trusts, I guess it ended up probably being for the best, since...well, I rather envisioned this original version as being some kind of crazy axe murderer, vaguely in the vein of that one psychotic android lady from Blade Runner, which doesn't really seem like the best fit now knowing that it's not exactly the worm itself. But really, I feel like if you select to play one of the NPCs, you should at least have the option of a pre-generated guardian, because there's absolutely no way I could figure out what Shadowheart's "guardian" should look like without at least having played the game a little first. They could've given you the option of picking someone that looks like whatever Shar is supposed to look like, for example. Oh well, whatever. Hey, pimples and freckles and other skin defects/textures, even if they're small/minor, are much better than unnaturally flawless skin that just makes your character look like they got completely airbrushed over! ...That's not really what you were talking about, though.

Okay, I'm going through the character creator now trying to design a guardian, whatever the hell that is. The game doesn't tell you anything about what it is, and designing a character with zero context for what they're supposed to be is incredibly difficult, so I'm going to assume it's the mental manifestation of the worm they shoved into your brain in the opening cutscene, as I have literally zero other information to go off of. So, confession time: I know I've been complaining about this game and 3D graphics in general a lot, but...this game has the opposite problem that most games have for me: there are way too many hair styles that I like. How the hell am I supposed to choose between Carrion Feathers, Highbrow Low Moralist, Sensible Extravagance, Ballerina Buns, Flaunting Bounce, or Springtime Entanglement? And there are honestly like...ten other choices that I like too, that if they were in most any other game's character creator (like the Souls games or that Harry Potter game), I would go "thank goodness, there's at least one decent option I can choose". Damn it all, hoisted by my own petard. Well, there's not a lot of face customization, so I suppose the least they could do is have a pile of good hair options - though they do look a little oddly low quality and also have this weird fuzzy effect as I move the camera around, even though I'm at maximum settings, but I figure I won't ever notice that in the actual game. Maybe. The facial hair, on the other hand, looks almost universally terrible and people should demand better than this pixely mess.

I do like the visuals from your screenshot. It looks nothing like D:OS, and that is a HUGE change from early EA visuals and a VERY good thing.

Context Menu (RMB by default) => Examine. The one Sturdy object I needed to destroy had 22DR to piercing damage and immunities to everything else. Went down from a grenade detonated by a fire arrow (for some reason, the Fire Bolt spell resulted in lower damage). I think, I've reached Act 2 (the second map with DoT) and some issues are starting to show: Also, does anyone know what are the options in that area to negate the DoT (the stronger one)? And completely unrelated to the things above, the cut-scenes with shorter characters are done quite well - when I was hugged by a human-sized NPC, the NPC kneeled first. Additionally, one note about the guardian (light spoilers for Act 2):

Link to Github: https://github.com/Silvris/RingingBloom Getting it to start seems to require installing Version 3.1 of .NET Core SDK. RingingBloom is made for modding .bnk/.pck files in recent Capcom games. Since these games all use Wwise (the same audio engine used in Deadfire) it seems to work for editing .bnk files for Deadfire as well. I haven't really tested it very much beyond what is in video above. The only issue I've encountered thus far is the audio file I replaced in the .bnk seems to only play once per scene. There may be other issue I haven't noticed. There's small wiki for how to use and set up the program but here is the setup that worked for me: The "Soundbank.xml" file and all of Deadfire's .bnk files can be found under the "StreamingAssets" directory of the game folder: "\Pillars of Eternity II Deadfire\PillarsOfEternityII_Data\StreamingAssets\Audio\Windows" MAKE SURE TO CREATE A BACK UP OF A .BNK FILE BEFORE EDITING AND/OR REPLACING IT. The mode "None" seems meant for non-Capcom games. This is what I used. It is possible that one of modes for a Capcom game might work and possibly produce better results (as I said I haven't tested the program very extensively). I created 2 folders outside of the Deadfire directory called "Import" and "Export" and set them as the respective default paths for those action in RingingBloom under "Options". "Import" is where I placed a copy of the "global.bnk", and once I had made the edit to the file ("You must gather your party" was named "Imported Wem 185" and has the id: "58017498") I saved it to the "Export" folder. The files in the .bnk are listed in a numerical order by their ID number, however the RingingBloom instead gives each file a display label of "Imported Wem *". Your best bet is to find a sound is to open the "Soundbank.xml" in notepad and search for the name of the file which should should eventually lead you to the file id.

https://greyhawkonline.com/greyhawkwiki/Spelljammer https://spelljammer.fandom.com/wiki/Spelljammer_Helms#Series_helm spelljammer, which has been around a long time, took starships label literal. think treasure planet "ships." edit: nautiloid info https://spelljammer.fandom.com/wiki/Nautiloid https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Nautiloid HA! Good Fun!

The pre-release numbers for the console release additonally hint at something a bit more going on. The 800+K peak numbers on Steam are concurrent players, not total. That's a number only ever reached by PC gaming's biggest hits. Larian's management told their staff to expect ~100K concurrent players. And they knew their EA sales numbers. Larian's boss worried Baldur's Gate 3 had peaked in early access, so its massive 800K concurrent player launch was 'way, way beyond' expectations | PC Gamer Personally, I'm just glad an (AAA) RPG "proper" is rocking things out fairly decently anyway. It may of course never even hint at Skyrim-ish numbers or anything (neither did the original Dragon Age, arguably one of the last AAA RPGs harkening back to 1990s design ethos some). But in an (AAA) RPG world dominated by action-adventure-ish gameplay and shallow (character) systems, BG3's not the worst of things to ever happen. I don't think it will influence much though. No less as the entire AAA industry has moved into a different direction -- and this includes the staff that have been built (and/or left studios) throughout the years. Additionally, BG3 may have shipped at the perfect time. With D&D being at another peak (even though the fun movie flopped), too. Personally, without the digital distribution / indie / crowdfuding revolution of the early 2010s (of which Larian have been a part of, even if I didn't like DOS overly much), I may have stopped playing one of my fav genres altogether... it's just changed that much ever since the demise of Interplay, Origin, Looking Glass, Black Isle, Troika, Sir-Tech, New World Computing et all.. Immersive Sims meanwhile at least had Arkane Studios going strong (with both classic CRPGs and IMmersive Sims being influenced by the very same thing.... TT RPGS). Arkane even pulled off Prey, a game that in many ways is even MORE complex than the 1990s/early 2000s games it took inspiration from. Whereas Dragon Age:Origins is a simplified BG in almost every way. That said, BG3 also badly needs more UI/font size scaling options. Even indies are doing it as a standard feature these days...

God, yes. This, along with a party switching UI, would go a long way towards me actually using companions other than the first three I met. I know, I know. I just wish it were "Forgotten Realms: Revenge of the Tadpoles" or something. Sticking a number after a title feels like a big deal!

Couldn't get it even if I wanted to, I'm over my data limit.

Of course they said it. As it is true. They had to accommodate to the situation with minefields guarded by artillery, which they probably underestimated. Most likely culprit was probably overconfidence in Western gear and training. But reading all the stuff thrown around lately in some newspaper was pretty derogatory and looked a lot like Russian propaganda and not like describing the real issues on the front 🤷‍♂️

I am still in EA area with a lot of stuff ahead of me, before I can even consider moving toward new content.

Well, the goal of the satire was always to stir up a little bit of controversy to engage people in discussion. Which this guy achieves with his cartoon 🤷‍♂️. The last two weeks like 80% of all news about Ukraine, was about some guy in western newspaper complaining, that the offensive is going to slow. A lot of people have talked about it on this boards as well. For a comparison, just look at the operation Overlord... Allies landed 2,052,299 men in Northern France, and it still took them almost three months to liberate Normandy and Brittany, a land area similar to occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts. And they had air support 🤷‍♂️ UA has probably less than 200-300k men around the whole frontline, and scarce air support 🤷‍♂️

It's probably so the aliens can spy on you while you play.

For some reason GoG is downloading for me 15 gig patch for terra invicta - I am wondering why such game need even 15 gig of space...

That's such a great description and spot on.

long winded walls of text is no mark of excellence. i'm pretty sure it's all based on hard data, they know for a fact no one reads beyond 5 paragraphs. i don't really miss the lore books. it's cool that it's there, but, usually there is so much of it you lose interest very quickly. i'll read through the lusty argonian maid, dwemer lore, not so much.

We will see. I am sure they will not - I think it should be already clear that all companion's archs will culminate once we reach Baldur's Gate. As to how much content they will have per act - we will see. I do agree that companions feel a bit formulaic. Even more so, if one played D:OS2. So far, they are still better than I expected. In EA I found them really grating.

Physicists achieve fusion with net energy gain for second time | Ars Technica

It's them who are dying out there. Ghouls from safe, rich, fat places who complain that counteroffensive isn't ~showy~ enough for their tastes can go f*ck themselves.

What bothers me about BG and party based games is that I literally feel like I'm playing work! I'm a manager in charge of a department in a grocery store and I have 7 "party members" that I have to keep track of and make sure I don't p*ss them off to much or they'll "quit the party" and leave and each one has their own unique set of personalities and back stories and their own set of skills and some are higher level then others and I have to constantly keep track of their movements and actions and heal them if they get injured. I mean jeez I just want to shed all of that and be a lone wolf on my free time! Can anyone sympathize with me here? xD

Quote for the Day: "Junior programmer demanded we unblock ChatGPT. Told him CPU time was 100% allocated to finding John and Sarah Connor. He completely missed the joke."

Thanks for sharing. The hype is strong in me. 🙃

Why does the government not want you to see this video? Rated 8/10 hypes on the internationally trusted Bruce rating scale. Or this or this https://youtu.be/2mX2iDI00FM

I think they probably could have had a new character in deadfire. One thing I like about dragon age is that they have a new main character every installment. There was no real reason the watcher was back for deadfire imo. Deadfire did a decent job giving reason why you are level 1, but in general it's annoying when you start a sequel weaker than you ended the previous game. I really really hope we get a proper poe3

Well, supposedly there are reasons to be hopeful of a third-person option: 1) Apparently in a job posting from Obsidian for Avowed back in 2019/20, they specifically asked for people with programming skills and experience in both first-person and third-person combat animations. 2) In certain places in the recent gameplay trailer they do show both exploration and combat animations in third-person. But of course it remains to be seen if these reflect in-game gameplay or are merely cinematic displays. 3) When Grounded was released Obsidian said they did not have any plans to add a third-person option for that game, and yet now they have announced the addition of a third-person option for that game. So, all taken together, some measure of cautious optimism?

I figured the game would be a lot smaller after being installed - usually, different languages take up a pretty good portion of the installer size. But, um, the 109 GB multi-language GOG installer instead became 125 GB after being installed. So...I guess not. Made my guardian, got through the first cutscene, tried to figure out the camera controls, saved my game and quit. No static camera makes me wanna cry. Not that I quit because of that, just can't play right now, .

it is a bit weird, isn't it. I had my first encounter with it, and it more or less it is that. Overall, a massive improvement over EA aparition.

Wigga android, great