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Didn't see one, so I figured I would create one, just to say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all you lovely saints, sinners, heretics, heathens, faithful, lost and found people out there. I haven't been active online much the last month and a half, because crunch time and projects going live at years end. Comes with the profession Hope you guys are going to enjoy some time off with family, friends, loved ones or favourite spider pet, whatever you fancy

Tried for the fifth time to give BG3 a chance. I need to stop giving it a chance. There is nothing I like about it. Closest thing would be the combat. I don't mind the combat but I absolutely hate the 3D enviroments for CRPGs. Constantly feel disoriented. Also everything tends to look the same from what I've seen. Some abandoned temple looks the same as a goblin fort. Which also looks exactly like every dungeon i saw in divinity Story wise there is just way too much going on. Squid people, demon people, every companion is a vampire, or a demon or some person who has a demon in their head or sold their soul to a demon. Dice rolls for dialogue is painful. It feels like they want you to save scum. Can you not? Sure but you will just die in that combat and end up redoing the dice roll anyway. I might be just dumb or not giving it as much attention as it needs, but I never know what the hell is going on. I'm going to save some druid leader but then he's working for the goblins and also some demon has a deal for me, but not yet he will be around later. And I guess I'm supposed to help squid people but also they are the enemies. I just... don't care. It's way too much stuff that is thrown at you with little context. Anyway I hate this game and hopefully I never try to play it again.

I like this conversation. A number of people who dislike things I dislike, dislike things about BG3 I would be bound to dislike, were I to play it. So I guess I can skip it.

Happy Holidays indeed y'all! FYI https://forums.obsidian.net/announcement/74-happy-holidays/

@Theonlygarby, @Hawke64, I agree with you both on BG3. I'm not as negative on some of the issues, and so I'm able to handle playing the game, but your critiques are spot on for me. The painful battles are especially surprising, because I was told repeatedly by the TB fanatics on the Larian forum that the battles are few and not trash mob battles like in a RTwP game. Well, they lied as far as I'm concerned. Trash mob battles are aplenty in BG3, and I'm able to get through them without driving myself crazy only because I'm playing with a party of six and on a mix of low and normal difficulty settings. The UIs are horrible. The hotbar practically useless. Party movement a huge pain. And yes, the story is everywhere.

But only about a month behind me playing it, so you are good, carants. Just be careful that you do Old Countries in a New World before Mystery if the Ancient Ruins. Anything else in the game you can progress and leave as you wish (the few times things are timed it will tell you). But if you progress those specific quests in a mix, you can get the game breaking bug I got.

Merry Christmas.

Happy horror days?

WoW added housing, so wasting time confirming the fact that I have no style.

I finished Greedfall. After that one big bug, it was bugfree. I enjoyed it. The writing improves over the course of the game. It felt a bit awkward in the beginning, as if it needed to figure out what the social position of your character is - npcs were acting as if random guard and your character were equals, making me long for a reply of "You seem to mistake this for a democracy. Oh, you don't know what a democracy is? It is the system in which your opinion and consent theoretically matters." They managed to give the impression of choices that matter well. Spiders' best game hands down.

Tim Cain is back at Obsidian!

I recommend drinking while playing.

A danceable rendition of a Christmas carol

Merry Christmas everyone and happy NY This is my best holiday of the year

Yes, of course. That's why I said "highly evolved AI systems." So, not current AI systems, which I agree are hugely limited (and biased) by their human creators and maintainers. I'm talking future AI systems that can truly think for themselves, and thereby overcome and reject the initial biases and bull**** their human creators input into them. But that's unfortunately a rather long way off, and very likely well after I'm dead and gone. Very sad.

The only people that AI should replace are CEOs and politicians.

and a Festivus for the rest of us!

Happy Holidays!

It's a give and take. Both have attempted to be solved by timed quest and autoleveled enemies. Neither of which is good and makes for games I personally dislike. I will rather take a narrative hit and the chance that I may be overleveled for the main quest that the alternative.

And also on the smaller scale

BG3 doesn't split XP, you're on the same levelling curve whether solo or with a party of six and XP is synced such that any party member with less XP than your main character will be brought up to match them. Note this doesn't work in the reverse, so it's possible to get companions that are higher level than the player character (though this is only really likely to be seen when speedrunning). For the most part, it also attempts to prevent double-dipping on XP, in that if you kill an enemy after talking your way past them, they won't award any kill XP. Yeah, this catches out a few people and is a bit of a silly outcome. I think it's an engine limitation - enemies can't go through zone transitions so the ones outside can never reinforce the ones inside and vice versa. That limitation also means the optimal solution is to fast travel out from the indoor area so you can engage the outdoor ones from a safer distance. (It's also a bit dumb that two of the leaders can be assassinated properly with the camp remaining neutral, but one just sets an unavoidable faction-wide aggro flag) Speaking of engine limitations, the text-only "books" in the game are a pretty glaring one. The system doesn't support graphics so even if you're looking at a map or a drawing, you just get text saying stuff like "this is a map showing an X nearby". The D:OS engine has done good service over the years and has seen some nice upgrades, but it's time for Larian to move on.

Hmm, I might concede on Giths as I don't think you can avoid fighting them if you do all of the content there. Goblins though - is great. In fact the Goblin camp is one bit of BG3 that I love without hesitation and if all of the game was of that quality it would be 10/10 game for me. It's organic, it offers narratively sound objectives that can be completed in a multitude ways utilizing a neat combination of scripted and systemic options. If you decide to obliterate the whole camp, that can be tedious but that's a very specific, systemic outcome - you decided to fight essencially a city of neutral NPCs, so you do just that. There are so many neat things you can do to affect that combat encounter - tip off Minthara about the location of the Grove, but then help defend the Grove, getting a pretty great big battle and massively reducing camp's forces. Poison the drink at the party to make the outside battle easier. Sabotage war drums so enemies you are fighting now can't easily call for help from the rest of the room. Plenty of opportunities to silently dispatch smaller packs of enemies before engaging everyone else. There are so many ways of dealing with the camp, thoughout my hours of Early Access it was one part of the run I was always actively looking forward to. It seems I was always able to find a fresh way to express how my NPC would deal with that situation. Even my palladin coldly fighting through the whole camp out of principle - it's tedious, but fitting the character and an act.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II Really enjoying it. I wish there were more games like this.

Couple things I disagree with and couple I agree. As far as enviroments and visual variety I think BG3 is 2nd to none. Every area is unique and handcrafted. If anything, my complain would be that each act is so distinct it almost feels like I am playing a different adventures. There are some similar sensibilities to Divinities - Larian gonna Larian. And I personally don't like some of them. Old ruins and temples tend to look more like alien spaceships then ruins. But I still see it as fairly small fault. I also think Engine itself if quite fabulous. In general, I would agree with you on 3d, but Larian offers interactivity that a static 2d engine would struggle to offer. I think the tradeoff is well worth it, though UI and controls could be done better. I like dice rolls. Never felt a need to reroll - inspiration points might be already generous, as I felt I can force through any check that I feel I should have won. But for some ability to reload will be too much of temptation, and overall I do prefer Obsidian's static check design for PC games. But it is D&D, and being a table-top ruleset D&D relies on dices. Personally, I found Disco Elysiums double dice system to work better - I think Josh S. have written about it at some point. Story wise - yeah, I always had issues with BG3 narrative. Really disappointment comes in act3 where they have to try to wrap everything together and try to pay of the promises off. I don't know why Larian games are they way they are - it feels to me like they just throw everything they can think of into the pot, and don't have defined big picture. A collection of non-linear, organic encounters can work well, but their worlds are so artificial and incoherent. I love that BG3 is, I just wish someone else made it

Fate of the Old Republic, we doin this? FOTOR

Star Wars: Outlaws - Pretty interesting so far. The world looks great and it is busy with lots of NPC's. The story and characters are solid. Your furry sidekick is adorable and useful. The controls are weird. It's a game designed for a controller but really doesn't need to be. I prefer M&K, and it is way better for looking around and firing the blaster, but it has some awkward bits. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, plenty of 3rd person games already have good keyboard layouts that you can copy. The stealth is a bit sloppy too. It plays a bit like the Hitman games. It is serviceable. Anyways, should be a fun game to play over winter break. I'm watching Solo as well, which is a good companion movie to the game. Honestly the game makes a lot more sense if you've watched all the animated stuff. The Pikes and Crimson Dawn aren't exactly mainstream Star Wars lore.

I just finished my Ultimate Challenge as SC Bloodmage. I'd like to thank the entire community. I couldn't have done it without you. Also I would like to thank Josh Sawyer and his team for making such great game as Deadfire. I hope we will get PoE3 or at least Avowed 2. I'm uploading last video of my run (entire walkthrough took about 13h). I will submit my save and playlist soon.

Just an FYI to anyone thats interested in repairing stuff themselves: iFixit Made an AI Assistant to Help You Fix Your Gadgets (and It's Free, for Now) The new app was an instant download for me.

Re: Tim Cain news - well, firstly, that's awesome. Secondly - I'd rather it be a new IP. I almost always would rather it be a new IP. Because then there's hope that it could be the one that would reignite in me an interest in an rpg, again, if only for a short while.

always make no sense that paradox insist on making bloodline 2 with random studio if paradox know the game are too much for themself why not at least commission a studio with a little more experience

And if you want to add another element of joyous, look up Daniel Craig's reaction to the above..

Decided to give the gothic like Of Ash and Steel a go. vaguely stilted dialogue, somewhat odd voice acting, and got killed by an oversized rat immediately after leaving the tutorial area. 10/10 for being a gothic like experience so far.

I enjoyed Black Geyser. I'd play more games in that setting.

We could have told you that for free. Remember what the goblins say: Time is money

Horses The guy forgot who's going to choose his retirement home and that old people's bones are oh so fragile (granted, the MC was a few years away from gaining the upper hand there). There were a few extremely dissonant moments, including this one (the music was appropriately jolly; I won, after all): The code for the whole 1 puzzle the game has: The ending: The Dungeons of Hinterberg. It looks better than it plays. There is no VA, but the developers did not adapt the lines for the MC's outfits. Arguably, only the default one was showing the armour. Atlas Fallen Looks and plays great. It is ultimately an open-world'y action game with a customisable avatar and giant monsters to defeat, but it feels genuinely good. It is fully playable offline (got it from GOG), the controls are rebindable, the saving system supports several save files per character (I do find it disappointing that so many other action games lack such a basic feature) and uses a combination of auto- and manual saving, and the controls are fully rebindable. There is no crafting, but various loot is used for equipment upgrades. There is no encouragement to murder the deer. The Dark Queen of Mortholme It is 20 minutes and free on Itch.io. Given the lack of rebindable controls and any saving, this is a reasonable price point. Narratively, it does not really work, especially when you notice when the hero stops dodging and jumps into your attacks and there is not enough time to establish the characters or the setting, but might be worth one's time to try. It is also available on GOG and Steam for ~£4 (not recommended).

With the companion quests it is especially Kurt's quest that really matters, I understand the ending is affected by a number of things but will always end in the confrontation with that one major choice. I get that people think the devs wrote a naive fairy tale ending, but I find it refreshing not to be driven from one forced binary choice to the next, like a Telltale game, to be given the illusion of choices that matter. Do you want vanilla or chocolate ice cream is not a meaningful choice - you still get ice cream at the end. It was simply arbitrarily decided I get to only have one flavor (I still buy two scoops, as I don't get refunded half the game's price for never playing the other choice).

I'd say that the issue with Bloodlines 2 as released was the lack of experience on the developers' side (no idea what happened with the original team and their version). And I agree that Obsidian could have handled the title much better. Larian has demonstrated that older IP can be wildly successful, but they also had a strong playerbase interested in their work more than in a Baldur's Gate game. Given that Bethesda seems to be trying to release things alongside the TV series, I would bet on FO:NV2 as well, though I would prefer a new IP (or at least something not post-apocalyptic).

Horses in particular took 3 hours. Otherwise, I was on AL last week (still have a few days to spend until 2026) and Black Geyser was of reasonable length (~35h for the first playthrough, 8h? for the second) to play. I also WFH 3 days per week and it is glorious as it cuts down ~130 minutes of commute per day. I would not try to play anything Ubisoft-like and currently just listening to the other gamer in the household playing Rogue Trader. I like Owlcat, but the turn-based combat and their density of encounters fill me with dread. So, might try in a year.

Feels great in these Gothic-likes to finally become powerful and then revisit places on the map to clean house. But the most enjoyable is really to be able to pick up whatever you want without having to worry about getting encumbered.

It is a bit like what you'd get if you described Gothic to an alien race and they decided to try their hand at it to replicate literally everything about it. Apart from everything else I also haven't met a single woman (one women, not a romantically unattached woman. It's Piranha Bytes like, not Bioware like. Sorry Bruce) in my brief sojourn. I did catch a fish, and squashed some bugs (hmm) for a quest, so there are some animals I'm a genuine threat to.

I hear for Gothic like games, studios actually hire professional bug devs to add the right bugs to the games.

Trump pardons Honduran ex-president who was convicted of drug crimes Just the irony and hypocracy of this pardon speaks volumes. We're murdering people who are alledgedly trafficking in drugs in the US, then freeing a jailed foreign politician who was convicted of trafficking in drugs with the US. Not a good look.

I have replayed Black Geyser. The critical path with claiming the stronghold was 7.5 hours. There are some continuity bugs, but overall it was fun. Not doing the time-travel quest turned out to be a mistake - it allows to skip a large dungeon and an otherwise-unavoidable boss. I have also managed to get the king killed prematurely, but the game softlocked due to it, so it took a few more hours to do it "properly". The writing occasionally makes me want to cry, but there are also the obviously OOC options, so it kind of balances out. Granted, in the dialogues with the king, choosing them quickly leads to combat and the infinite guards teleporting in.

Dragons are easy with this foolproof strategy:

I am playing on the latest patch (i.e. version 1.0.5.0 from Nov 11th) and at some point the dialogue of many (possibly all) NPCs has reset. They offer dialogue, including quest dialogue, about things that already happend, quests that were already completed and choices that where already made (i.e. "this will be remembered" dialogue options) Some examples include (among others): - The doctor and patient in the Fairfield clinic (quest dialogue starts anew and I can get the quest reward a second time) - Val talks about the special lockboxes again after entering the ship and mentiones that the machine is stuck (and gives me another lockbox key during the dialogue) - Inez starts her "When I first joined up with you..." dialogue again (which includes several "this will be remembered" choices, so I am somewhat concerned whether this will break something later) I am not exactly sure when it happened. I tried to test several older saves and it seems that Val talking about the lockboxes was triggered after returning to the ship for the first time, after the Vox Relay mission and meeting the messenger on the landing pad. Inez dialogue might have reset even earlier, but I am not entirely sure. I have seen serveral reports of similar things happening to other players. Just wanted to report that this apparently can still happen after the latest patch. I hope it won't break my playthrough and/or can be retroactively fixed by an upcoming patch. Attaching some screenshots of the mentioned examples for Val and Inez.

up to aurora, we use argenta as a sniper. the rest o' the game am going flamer(s). argenta and heinrix, played as their kinda defaults, become cheat characters by mid game and although a flamer argenta isn't that much weaker than bolter, she feels a tiny bit less cheaty and so am able to add her to our party with our conscience unblemished. keep in mind, am not pretending as if our feels make sense, but given owlcat's writing efforts coupled with the intentional ludicrousness o' the setting, playing rogue trader complete reasonable and rational would be a comical self-own. HA! Good Fun! ps a respec after each major patch is kinda de rigueur at this point, although am not sure if the aoe psyker staff powers being treated as dodgeable melee attacks is intended or not. regardless, am recalling how a few people in this thread went nuts when obsidian considered adding respec to pillars. how bob's use o' respec could ruin doug's game confused us even at the time, but regardless, am amused there were nary a peep about owlcat's wrath or rogue trader respec from the purists.

I toyboxed her personal quest. I found those hidden counters based on your dialogue responses stupid.

Argenta did it all. Thanks to the Blessed Bolter Casing and the insane damage stacking she was even a better sniper than actual sniper characters. Anything in her line of sight just died, no matter how far away. My Argenta turned into a Sister Repentia, which made it all the more hilarious.

Who most definitely is the love child of Durance and Furrante...