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https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-witcher-3s-redkit-mod-tools-launch-may-21st-enabling-a-new-era-of-ambitious-overhauls https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/animal-well-review Steam discussions mention the controls not being possible to rebind, which is a deal-breaker for anything that is not a visual novel with 1 button controls. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/orpheus-may-be-missing-from-hades-2-but-hes-returning-to-role-playing-musical-stray-gods --- About the petition, it was initiated due to Ubisoft pulling The Crew, which had a single-player yet server-reliant mode, from the players' libraries. It is not the first time they are doing this, but before that it was "just" DLC for the older AC games. I would strongly prefer the publishers to be legally encouraged to respect their customers purchases. If the publishers in their wisdom, made the DRM in a single-player game to rely on the servers, surely they can spend work-hours on untangling the dependency. The smaller developers are usually nice enough not to try doing this.

There is no Light I suppose, the sexism is to indicate that they are safe to kill. I think, the setting is post-apocalyptic. The protagonist has a rather interesting manner of holding swords. It is nice that the story and the gameplay fit well together. The first boss. Aspire: Ina's Tale Islets The final island: Did the timed challenge. Sheepo (The screenshots cover the full game). Kidnapping the eggs of local population on the behalf of an intergalactic organisation. Most locals don't care, the relatives of the eggs, do, though. Late-game bosses and ending. Fallout 4 Far Harbor, ending: Xanadu Next

Burning incense may appease the machine spirit. Reciting the proper litanies is also always advisable.

Since this is a "history" post, I'll start with the oldest stuff first and work my way towards the current time, here and now on the Obsidian boards I often deny having owned a gaming console and that is technically correct. But... long unrelated story, I grew up with relatives who were "junkies" (heroin addicts) and they would often rob stores and homes for things to sell for mere pittances at times to finance their addiction. One day, the oldest showed up at my parents place (my mother, for reasons, had become their legal guardian) with a Pong gaming console they had stolen somewhere and no fence would take it off their hands. The original Pong console was among my first video gaming experience in the mid 70's. It was my parents though, not mine. (I would have loved to put an image of the console here, but I honestly do not remember what it looked like 50 years ago) Other sources of video gaming at the time was the arcade machines a various convenience stores and grill bars. Some were electronic, some were part mechanical, part electronic. I particularly remember a "Duck Hunt" game, where several layers of glass were used to create the sense of depth and a single glass plate was used to reflect a flying duck from a TV screen hidden out of sight. The shotgun was mounted to a stick that was effectively a big joystick. No fancy electronics at all. Other places had more modern games like Galaxy Invaders... I spent a fortune in coins on those machines. Jump forwards almost a decade, 1983 I was convinced I was going to end up studying biology after high school... until my dad came home with three page advertising pamphlet for the Commodore 64. It was so colourful and impressive looking. It used an elephant to symbolize the humongous memory it had (even though only 38k turned out to be available to the user in the end). I managed to raise the money for my machine of dreams as well as the associated tape recorder and two games. A game on tape called "Beach Head" and a cartridge called "International Soccer". First two games I ever bought with my own money. Never mind that programming the C64 got me hooked on software development and an impromptu career change, the games changed my life too, spending much of my free time playing games on the old "Bread Box" (Danish nick name for the C64). US Gold was a major publisher int he 80's and the football game? It took almost 10 years before a better game of its kind came out. Another decade later I raised the money for a Commodore Amiga 4000 and a hard drive. Gaming now became almost an art form. Bear in mind, in the early 90's, the Amiga completely outperformed contemporary desktop PC's, with the latters CGA graphics and built in tweeter for sound. Never mind the operating system, where MS only caught up with Windows 8 or thereabouts. But the games... sooo many, soo good. On the C64, I developed a love for strategy games and role playing games. SSI gold games, the Ultimas etc. were not just nostalgia, they were state of the art as each individual title came out. So many strategy games too, it was like paradise for a gamer like me. The Amiga added better graphics and real music to many titles. And they just kept coming for the next decade. This is where I almost get to the point... (skipping a list featuring literally a decade and hundreds of Amiga games here) Some of the newer PC games in the late 1990’s looked interesting and I could run them on a PC Emulator. One title in particular stunned with its atmosphere (because I'm a child of the Cold War and the end of the worlds was always present), the demo for a game called "Fallout" had me completely hooked. I bought the full game and... it didn't want to run on my PC emulator (even though the official demo did). Life as a PC gamer Building myself a PC, my first gaming experiences on it was Interplay’s Fallout. More games followed and Fallout together with the first Tomb Raider were my standout memories from the late 90's. Then I ran into a game from the now established Black Isle Studio called Baldurs Gate 2 (yes, I missed the first one) and I spent the next 12 months, day and night playing the heck out of that game, to the detriment of the rest of my life pretty much. Fallout 2 happened, I ended up buying Baldurs Gate 1 too, completing it a few times, nothing like the time I invested in BG2 though. Still, I took note of the name Bioware as well as Black Isle. That thing called Obsidian I was active on the internet too at the time, but I had little interest in this thing called "Forums" (some newfangled sofware that was probably going to die out in a year or two, so why bother?). Usenet was where things happened and many discussion groups (especially the alt groups like alt.games.interplay) were completely unmoderated. Calling it the wild west is being nice to it. Usenet died the slow death of entropy and forums stayed. By the time I had convinced myself to join the Interplay forums, Interplay de facto folded. At least, it ceased to exist as the Interplay I knew. That's when I heard about this "successor company" called Obsidian Entertainment which had plans for opening up a forum. Still not the fastest tool in the shed, it took me a fortnight to sign up. Despite being somewhat of a troll at times and getting into fistfights at times, I ended up as a moderator. Much to my own surprise honestly. I suppose the thinking at the time was something along the lines of using a troll to catch a troll. The discussion subject at the time was "Project Delaware", resulting on all sorts of crazy speculations and wishful thinking (and doom saying). Knights of the Old Republic 2 arrived and... good game with awful ending is the best way I can summarize it. An understatement of course, as the ending was completely missing for various reason... Neverwinter Nights 2 followed and was slightly less buggy the Kotor2 had been, but not flawless. The DLC's however... Mask of the Betrayer in particular brings back fond memories of a game I might not otherwise remember. The Sequel Maker Obsidian was developing a reputation of making buggy sequels to Bioware games that were all 132% perfect... at least if you were to believe the most critical voices. Of course, there is a lot more to how such thing happen, but gamers are a weird bunch, often prone to tunnel vision and confirmation bias, congregating towards echo chambers. Especially when it comes to likes and dislikes of games. Fallout New Vegas managed the impossible, convince a lot of people that Obsidian could actually make great games, that weren't necessarily direct sequels to existing games. It is probably also the only Obsidian game I feel like coming back to again and again, despite it's age. I know Outer Worlds offers a lot corporate humour and a feeling of living in dystopia, but something about the post nuclear setting just strikes a nerve because of my age (growing up during the cold war, expecting the end of the world every day). Playing through scenarios where humanity survives said war feels good I suppose? Still here Obsidian is no longer known in the business as the "buggy sequel" maker, but as a world builder, story creator and the maker of interesting characters. Like Obsidian, I’m still here. Still enjoying video games 40+ years later, still having a preference for crpg's and turn based strategy games. There are many more Obsidian games I could mention (take a look at the forum!) and would have loved to spend time on, but those are the ones that stuck out for me... -Gorth

I actually forgot that I even owned The Crew, I guess that it's been a while since I used Ubisofts launcher. I hope that the campaign gets some traction, there are active petitions going on now in the UK, Australia and Canada while there is a lawsuit going on in Brazil. I'm hoping to hear about options in the EU as Swedish authorities are useless here.

I feel that Putin's strategy now is to try and take Khar'kiv and then use it as leverage and a bargaining chip to force the Ukrainians to accept an end to the war on Russia's terms.

While I'd agree (and that trailers give this feeling too often these days), one can also go too far into another direction. Like this one. It tells me so little I searched for a brief plot synopsis because I couldn't tell even the tiniest thing about what it would be about - not even what genre/s it might fall into. I guess it got me curious enough to look up the movie tho, so it worked in that sense.

Entropy is really incredible spell but is disapointing with direct damages. The 100% crit conversion is not fading with CC / pure DoT effects. It is the same for Charm or Sleep effects, they dont fade with CC / Pure DoT. For this reason Entropy and Call to Slumber are together completely mad (but not cheesy thing because there is always a risk). I made a topic about Entropy and every attacks that work well with it, and before that another about sleep effect if you want to know more about this.

Finished Islets. In general, very nice mechanically, the story is not exactly deep, but nice. Review: Then purchased and completed the developer's previous game, Sheepo. Not as good as Islets, but generally fine. Review: Tried VtM - Swansong. It did not run on the main PC, judging by the error message, the issue is with the OS. On Steam Deck, the poorly-made saving system is significantly harder to mitigate, so probably will play on the spare PC some time later. Tried Xanadu Next. Refunded - between the screen flickering (resolved by running in the window mode), crashes (resolved by deleting the intro movie), the mouse-only movement (not resolved, and the boring combat (not resolved), it did not seem to be worth the time. Finished Fallout 4: Far Harbor. It was generally fine. The body-hiding part of the assassination was a bit ridiculous - with some luck, I could have disintegrated the body during combat. Tried Brain Marmalade, a platformer. Got stuck in 5 minutes. The controls are not rebindable, the resolution cannot be adjusted in-game. The art is fine, stylised like pen sketches. Started Aspire: Ina's Tale. After Islets and Sheepo, mind-numbingly boring. Looks lovely, but so, so shallow. The story follows a priestess who is trying to escape a sci-fi-esque tower. There are some light environmental puzzles, but they are not exactly challenging or engaging. Continued There is no Light. The protagonist is blissfully silent. Got repeatedly punched in the opening cut-scenes and I still don't quite get the logic, but the visual design is nice and controls are very comfortable and rebindable.

We are aware of the Location Obstructed building bug in Grounded. The team is currently working on a solution for this issue and we'll update players as soon as we have more information to share. Please note that the issue seems to occur with bases built around or on large objects such as the oak tree, wood pile, picnic table or other large in-game landmarks. If you run into any other issues during your time with Grounded please feel free to submit a support ticket. Obsidian Support Thanks

Replaying Allen Wake on the Xbox. This thing is still fun.

Not sure if this has been mentioned in here before, but a sequel to the Orphan Black sci-fi series is coming out June 23 on AMC. It stars Krysten Ritter of Jessica Jones fame. I enjoyed the original, particularly the remarkable work of Tatiana Maslany who simultaneously played more than five different and completely unique characters, so I'm looking forward to it.

Manor Lords - I don't profess to actually understand detailed mechanic workings, it's all too obscure/inconsistent/glitchy perhaps, but you do stuff enough times and you figure out what works. Hence, I have reached the point where I can restart, get to 600+ population, and then get bored. At least in terms of sandbox. On the one hand, I appreciate I can grow at my own pace. On the other hand, when there is no reason to keep growing (especially since the multiple-region stuff isn't it) outside of "town painting" a region, no risk or buildup left to do (I can literally walk away for hours and it runs itself with no problems) apparently for this game, 600 or so is the magic "I'm done" number. I've barely tried the combat. It sounds way too buggy with perhaps too dramatic a difference between too easy and irritatingly rushed.

Great read @Gorth! Very interesting that you are also a wargammer. Have you looked at any of the video game wargames currently being made based on those old AH/VG/GDW boardgames? There is a studio called Strategy Game Studio (SGS) that has been making several of these games, and their publisher is Avalon Digital. If you check out the Steam forum for their games, the main guy who works for SGS seems very passionate about bringing those old TT wargames to video gaming. He might even be interested in adding another programmer to SGS. I have the following wargames in my Steam wishlist, and as always, looking for feedback from anyone who's played them: SGS NATO's Nightmare SGS Afrika Korps: Tunisia Strategic Command: World War I Napoleon's Eagles: Game of the Napoleonic Wars

What.. what year is it?

pretty sure outer world would do better if come out now anti bethesda sentiment are as high as it ever was no need to worry about that dying down anytime soon

Only Alpha Prololol 2 can save Obsidian now

Imagine being able to talk to animals in the future via ai translators. Would be wild.

didn't outer world perform pretty well by obsidian standard even come out with some enhance edition nonsense later what is the expectation of outer world 2

Using algorithms to decode the complex phonetic alphabet of sperm whales Just, wow. I can imagine it's like trying to talk to a completely alien race. Where do we even begin?

Long history of this happening. Recent example: Embracer. Older example: EA's Bioware deal also included Pandemic Studios, which they obviously wouldn't have bought if it wasn't a bundle deal since they closed it down in the first major round of layoffs post acquisition.

Hades2. It's alright. More of the same so far. Like really more of the same. Improved, but in 6 hours nothing popped up which would explain why this sequel had to be made (money, obviously, but I am still willing to give Supergiant benefit of a doubt). That said, EA seems rather chunky and quite complete in many aspects, so it is not possible that more cool stuff is yet to come (or still to appear in this build). One thing was mention so far, which I am not sure what it is supposed to be - so I am looking forward to finding out. Street Fighter6 update - I decided to switch my main - while Luke, whom I have been using up until now, is supposed to be by far the strongest character currently in the game, I felt I was reaching a peak of what I was able to achieve with him. To move foward I would have to get the hang of his perfect timing charge attacks, and figure out his rush combos - which at the moment are a bit too much for me. So I switched to the good, old Ryu. I am still getting used to it (tend to miss inputs a bit more often for now), but he seems more straightforward and deliberate.

I'll bite. Avowed underperforming = realistic. The Outer Worlds 2 doing the same = realistic. Obsidian being turned into Bethsoft junior / Fallout game factory liners = a possibilty. At least they'd be working on an IP they like, hey. In particular considering how freakishly long it takes to churn out these games these days -- and that delivering BIG IP blockbuster product corporations care about becomes slower and slower a process. Who was Football World Champion back when the last Dragon Age released? On which console did the last GTA game first release? When did the last Elder Scrolls main game come out, discounting re-releases? Does anybody even remember the last Mass Effect, for that matter? If you can positively answer these, chances are, you're a pretty old fart.

Great blog @Gorth! My start in gaming was my (at the time) new step-dad's Nintendo Entertainment System with Super Mario Bros. 3 getting me into consoles. Not long after, my blood-related dad got me into PC games with DOOM and Wolfenstein share ware via the old hard floppy disks people shared (got ours from my uncle). I wasn't aware of Interplay or Black Isle, but I did play KotOR 1 for the first time on my friend's Xbox and immediately fell in love. Ended up getting it on PC and when I saw the sequel nearly died until I saw that it was made by some company named Obsidian instead of Bioware. At the time I was like, "Oh man, it's not Bioware? This game is probably going to suck..." To my surprise I enjoyed it even more. Being able to corrupt my companions, especially taking the time to corrupt Mira just felt epic compared to only seeing Bastilla corrupt in the previous title. Years later, I end up seeing South Park and the Stick of Truth and seeing Obsidian and saying, "Oh yea, I forgot about them." I played that game and looooved it, especially Butters as Professor Chaos. It wasn't until my old co-worker from Best Buy reached out to me to play a new game he was a part of developing called Pillars of Eternity that I would forever remember the name Obsidian. He is the one who ultimately helped get me into the gaming industry within Obsidian and I am forever grateful as it's allowed me to work with amazing, creative people both in the studio and within the community. After almost 8 years, I still can't believe the things I get to do and the people I get to do it with. Another thing that your blog resonated with me was your experience playing Fallout, as I started playing it a week ago and only JUST beat that game technically this morning around 1AM and continued to start up Fallout 2. I can't wait to continue the adventure tonight

Ouch. Austin Texas being shut down is not surprising - I would mourn it as they create one of my fav game out of Arcanes output (Prey!), but allegiedly Redfall already drove most of that team away. Tango Gameworks though.... that's surprising. Hi-Fi Rush was the best thing XBOX released so far. Unless a lot of developers went after Shinji Makami when he left the studio, or something. Well, Grounded has been doing shockingly well, and Pentiment was super low budget. We will see how Avowed and Outer Worlds2 will do (not feeling great about Avowed so far...!).

Our first OBS Community Blog by @Gorth is now live: June and July are also written. Please DM if you have a musing in mind ...

I have now reduced difficulty in Troubleshooter to Easy, down from Hard. I am not mentally prepared to figure out the min maxing required to finish DLC 2 on hard. Or normal for that matter. I may go down to story difficulty, since at 300 hours, I am only interested in seeing where the story ends

If Obsidian eventually gets shut down too at some point, I'm hoping for somebody to mod the **** out of The Outer Worlds. We've shut down the best. Now try the rest. At Microsoft, we cut corners so you don't have to. Who, who, whoa, it's Spencer's!

This is probably wishful thinking, but Microsoft probably bought Bethesda for the Bethesda, not necessarily all of the other developer's Bethesda owned. They wanted the big IP's that Bethesda has. Obsidian and inXile are separate deals. It looks a lot worse if they go in and shutter them. But yeah, if Avowed or Outer Worlds 2 doesn't hit sales expectations, it could be very bad. So make sure to buy a copy and leave it running all day long to help them out.

MS going to close down Tango Softworks and Arkane Austin TX. WolfEye have set up their first ever offices in Austin TX just last year. That's the new studio by Arkane's founder Raf Colantonio, which already has quite an illustrious roster for people familiar. Any bets accepted there's more ex-Arkanes going to pop up in there? Every ending is a new beginning. Also, before anybody speculates: The dichotomy between Austin and Lyon has never existed like that. Arkane have never been a company of two studios. Rather a studio of two locations, with people moving between them as well (see Harvey Smith moving over to Lyon to direct Dishonored 2 and then going back). That's firstly a misconception that Colantonio himself has corrected multiple times. Secondly, if Lyon weren't working on a rather popular IP as we speak (Blade), I could imagine MS pulling the plug on them too. If Blade is gonna bomb... edit: Dang, @mkreku beat me to it.

The debacle around The Crew comes to mind. Also, might aswell drop this; https://www.stopkillinggames.com/ Short version Long version;

End of the day, if you enter into a contract in any other field and find you're losing money you can't arbitrarily decide to cancel the contract, with no consequences. If your options are literally literally shutting down a server or going bankrupt... your company is figuratively literally in the crapper already. Otherwise you're just trying to dodge obligations that you don't think you should fulfill because now they're costing you money- and often trying to get people to buy [sportsgame_currentyear] instead of playing [sportsgame_currentyear--] they'd otherwise be perfectly happy with. Software companies have got away with a load of crap you wouldn't get away with if you were selling sandwiches, beds, cars or even service contracts like catering or cleaning just because it's software. So your Suicide Squad game released 3 months ago as a GaaS and sold appallingly? Tough noogies, that's the risk you take as a company, Warners. It costs you money to run the servers for the 27 people playing it you say? That's the risk you take. You can tell how hard up WBD is, Dave Zaslav only took home 300mn in pay and stock options over the past three years, wonder how many servers even 1% of that would keep running... [yes, I know it isn't shut down, yet]

<disclaimer> I am not a lawyer </disclaimer> To me it is a bit like the different approach to garbage in different countries. In Germany, you pay for your garbage weight allowance. It is your garbage. You have your own bin. You have a padlock on the bin so no neighbour can sneak their garbage into yours and have you pay for it. In Greece, you do not have your own bin. You dump the garbage (ideally) in the city's garbage bins. You pay the city tax based on the square meters of your home, and the amount of actual garbage you produce is irrelevant. As a result though in Germany, throwing something in the garbage does not automatically relinquish ownership. In Greece it does. Taking this to gaming, does a permanent shut down of servers allow for the argument the company is relinquishing it's financial interests in the specific title and therefor a non-profit, community run server or a community coded removal of the always online system should be allowed?

Darkspore when EA shut down the server. It was always online even when playing single player. Yes, it wasn't a great game, but because co-op didn't do well, people couldn't relax in single player anymore? Any Microsoft Xbox live game when Microsoft decides to stop the live service on PC back in... Can't remember when. City of Heroes on the other hand proves that if the company is willing, it can allow the community to create the means to enjoy the game, even when the company has no more financial interest.

It's really depressing to see how people defend the megacorps for free.

Can't believe it needs to be said, but it is Bruce: mods are always use at your own risk. Eh, that's a massive non sequitor. If a company goes bust it also can't repay its debts, doesn't mean the laws saying it has to repay its debts are stupid because there are circumstances where they can't and don't. Gift cards, warrantees, obligations for items to be in reasonable working order and more all can- and usually do- go poof if the company does. You're not going to have lost the source code yet still be supporting a game, you need the source code for that, and the summary specifies reasonable working state when support ends. For physical goods that's a usual requirement under consumer guarantee legislation, no real reason for it not to be for digital goods*. So no trying to sue Looking Glass Systems or Paul Neurath personally for an old copy of System Shock 2 not working due to SafeDisc: it worked fine, when support ended in 2000. *indeed, the guarantee of reasonable working order for a reasonable timeframe already applies to software here as digital delivery is not excluded from the Fair Trading nor Consumer Guarantees Acts- and it cannot be contracted out via EULA. Even used to be mentioned specifically in the Steam Subscriber Agreement. And now that I check, still is:

Probably shouldn't have submitted that forum poster romance fanfic to the Community Blog Gorth anonymous Blog submitter.

They are anonymous contributions, right?.... right?

Hello trolls, friends, and denizens! I am fairly excited to share that our first three community blogs are in process and the first will be pushed on May 7th, and then the others will be published of each following month. I look forward to sharing such wisdom and insight that is courageously offered by our community members. If you have a musing you are considering, please PM me, as it is great to have a queue of posts lined up!

First of all, in a party a Druid can be more fun than a Monk because he can meke more roles (CC, DD, Healer), but other considerations about why choose monk remain. Druids are less powerful in PoE2 for many reasons: as Boeroer said, wildstrike abilities/talents in Poe1 are far more effective than in Poe2; as a consequence of first point, and for other little aspects (i.e. element talents/abilities like Scion of Flame which work in Poe1 for wildstrike don't work in Poe2), spiritshift is weaker in poe2; elemental talents/abilities (Scion of Flame, Hearth of the Storm) is more useful in Poe1 for boosting spell damage and Druids have many elemental damage spells (above all shock and burn). +1 PEN in poe2 is weaker as effect; best druid spell in poe1 (Relentless Storm) is less good in poe2, stun are better contrasted in the second game, while in the first maybe is the best spell considering also any other caster class; in poe1 all pg are single class and they are not perfectly balanced but you can compensate easily (with scrolls and items in particularly) but not in poe2: druids miss most of all confusion, paralysis and charming/dominating scrolls/items not present in poe2; they have bad tier 6, 7, 8 and 9 spells, only exceptions are Great Maelstrom and Avenging Storm (but this one is maybe better in poe1). So single class is near a non-sense powerful-wise for a druid, they can skip tier 8 and 9 for a multiclass optrion. In poe1 all are single class, so this is not a problem and spiritshift last levels balances out for weak spells (not as in poe2); as @thelee pointed out (and I will never end to thanks him ), Pollen Patch with Least Unstable Coil is cheesing in practice (an almost endless source of Briliiant), Avenging Storm and Great Maelstrom are very great spells, so it isn't true that last level Druid spells are so bad. But, excluding tier 9 spells that you don't have in poe1, tier 6, 7 and 8 spell seem better in poe1 than poe2 (Rotten Skull and Sunlance more powerful in the first game i.e.); many spells work better in Poe1: Taste of the Hunt, Form of the Delemgan, Rot Skulls and many are more case of use (Charme/Hold Beasts); subclass doesn't add much to class, indeed, maybe disadvantages are worst than how are the benefits; SOLO maybe fury or shifter can go but power-wise maybe better stick on Animist, in a group Lifegiver as a sense but also here: perhaps more loss than benefit... (to be true Shifter can be a good choice). In poe1 plain-old-single-class Druid can do almost all roles very good without problems/detriments/thoughts etc... Spell system: learning all spells without spending ability points is a very great thing; a part Lord Darryn's Voulge (but it can't go over superb level) better soulbound items in poe1 for druids better passives/abilities and many more to choose in poe1. There are only one exception: Watershaper. If you manage to play Tekehu or a mod for playing such a subclass, it is very powerful with many great spells foe-only Or maybe there are some things in poe2 for druids better of poe1: great maelstrom at level 9, touch of rot at level 1 (deleted in poe1, who knows why...) and empower spells works good with poe2 druids.

I probably beat you to it, but it's all out of my hands at the moment

"The Top 10 Reasons I left gaming and became a withered husk of my former self - number 3 will surprise you!" Maybe break it into parts and pitch each part? Nothing in Fio's post indicates you couldn't have multiple bites at the blog (cue Fio clarification). Based on Fio's wording, I think they'd want a blog post to tie into Obsidian's games in some way.