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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.

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!

Finished Outer Worlds 2. I put a lot of hours into it, I'd say about 50, and I felt like I searched most corners to get content done. There were some collection quests I didn't finish, but the story stuff was good and I liked what happened to all my companions. It was a fun universe to explore. I'll probably wait for some DLC before playing again. It felt bigger and more epic than OW1 and Avowed, so that was good. Now I'm playing Xenonauts 2, which just released Milestone 6. This makes the game feature complete. The next milestone is full release, so I'm planning on trying to get through a whole campaign before that drops. I've only lost 1 soldier so far, and that was due to a bad explosive throw. Lesson learned, propane tanks go boom.

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

@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.

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

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.

My Sis has been dealing with chronic pain (CRPS) for a while now. Recently she had a spinal cord stimulator surgically implanted, and the results have been exceptional. As long as she keeps it charged up, she is nearly free of pain. It's had a most wonderful effect. Science rocks.

Always good when offshore tech turns off a DB because "since the CPU usage was low, I assumed the server was not in use".

I have finished Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness. It is a party-based CRPG with RTwP combat in a fantasy setting. While the writing is uneven and the combat is simple (not based on an existing system), there is enough roleplay, QoL features, and some interesting gameplay systems to make the experience enjoyable. There is also delightfully little bloat allowing for a completionist playthrough of a reasonable length of 30-40 hours. The review which was longer than the character limit on Steam and GOG (there are no spoilers but it is long) :

I don't know of any way. But I didn't have that problem - I played at a time when Argenta killed trash mobs faster than it would take to search for a mod and install it At least encounters don't respawn.

Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.

I have completed the quest to the point where you need to return to Ruth . However when i try to speak with her, she only gives the option to "casually talk to her" and there is no option to finish the quest. I have done all the other parts of the quest including the optional ones.

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.

Every time I see "news" re: PC parts/prices "panics" etc, I pat my PC and compliment it, to encourage it keep running for, oh, say, 5 more years. It's not even the money, for me - it's becoming principle/disgruntlement. Also, my old tablet is still going like a champ, hope it works for another 8 years. I seriously use it more than the desktop for browsing/youtube etc. Makes me happy I'm no longer generally interested in any of the big name new titles. I'll also be keeping an eye on where that Steam machine goes. Could be a decent solution for ppl like me, in another generation or three. Wouldn't be my ideal solution but I'd probably like it a lot more than a PS/Xbox, the way things are going. Also - it's cloudy and cool and I'm just going to stay in bed all afternoon. Also also - current hubby back treatments did zip.

Finally, I finished the game. Considering the ending indicates that the story is clearly unfinished, I would like to humbly present my two cents, which could probably help a potential POE3 receive and sell a little bit better. Praises New Elements in RPG I think it's admirable that the devs have been letting players see new elements in their RPGs in order for the players to always have new things to try out. In POE1, we have the construction and upgrading about the Caed Nua stronghold; in POE2, we have the voyage, ship management, and ship combat. It seems to have been a tradition in Obsidian Entertainment's RPGs since Neverwinter Nights 2. Although I'm not a fan of the "Spirit Energy" system in Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, I admire the devs' effort in bringing a new element to the game all the same. Also, in this game, when we are on our way from a region to another region in a city (e.g. Neketaka), we sometimes run into a random event. That's also an innovative and fun design in my opinion. This innovative tradition really worth keeping up so that players can see that RPGs can be more than just plain story and quests doing. Surprising Detailed Designs In a previous thread, I talked about my experience of completing a quest which I thought I wouldn't have a chance. And later after I took a seemingly insignificant action, I was able to complete the quest. In short, initiating a battle with a ship without firm evidence of their crimes is not my cup of tea, and I thought I probably had to give up that quest. But after I put up a different flag on my ship, the target ship came to attack me, exposing they were really criminal. I was surprised that the design is so detailed that it offers players an alternative way to complete a quest. The design is very helpful, especially for players who value their moral choices. Whoever came up with the idea really deserves a kudos! Advice Let Controversial Ideologies Stay in Real Life The ideology in this case is feminism. In the game, we keep seeing high-standing or role-reversing female NPCs. Female gang leader, female captain, matriarch, female monarch, female warrior leader, female admiral, female chieftain, female scientist, female weapon smith, female weapon vendor, formidable retired bounty huntress, brave little girl, Berath manifests as a goddess -- you name it. Even the story narrator is female. On the contrary, the counterpart male NPCs are noticeably less in number. Through out the course of the game, we meet those female figures one after another. The marketing is so obvious that I felt it became a bit pushy and contrived. There is a reason that POE2 sold less than POE1. Please understand that the majority target audience of classic RPGs are male, and the said ideology is not likely to be preferable to a large number of them. If you would still implement feminism in your future projects, I hope you could make it optional so that players can make their own choices. Incidentally, we know that D&D has been promoting this kind of ideologies, and I really find it regrettable that POE did not seize the opportunity to differentiate itself from D&D in this respect. Respect Players' Choice of Companions In POE1, there were some recruitable companions who I didn't recruit and White March NPCs who I have never seen before. However, when they meet me in POE2, their dialogs blatantly said or implied that we traveled together or have met each other in the past. It's disappointing that the game did not respect my choices in POE1. Precisely speaking, I felt like a non-existent story was imposed on me. Of all such characters, only one's dialog allowed me to thoroughly deny any connection with him (He is from White March, according to the wiki). The rest's dialogs simply force me to choose options to say something like I recognize them ... blah blah blah. Also, at the end when the narrator is concluding my journey, one of the scenes mentioned my companions and the screen showed all recruitable companions standing together on my ship. However, I only recruited Eder and Aloth, so it makes no sense that other recruitable companions showed up on my ship in that screen. In fact, one of them (the Rauatai ranger) had already been killed by me for joining force with her superior in trying to murder me because I refused their shocking proposal against the Huana queen. Had my choices were respected, I would have felt less disconnected from the story. This is definitely something worth working around to make players enjoy the game more. Avoid Reusing the Voice of a Voice Actor or Actress Actually, this issue already existed and was more prominent in POE1. That is, the voice of Eder's voice actor was reused for many male NPCs. It sounds awkward and embarrassing. Yes, embarrassing. When that happened to me for the first time, I was like why on earth am I hearing Eder's voice from the NPC in front of me when Eder is in my group behind me. Although some of them have a bit different intonation, you can still make out it's the same voice actor of Eder's. I still remembered a quite funny situation in POE1 that 3 or 4 of my party members all shared the same voice of Eder's voice actor, and when one of them in a combat said something like "the weapon's not working" I couldn't tell who said it. In POE2, the male part is less prominent, but still persists. For example, you can still tell that Eothas' voice is Eder's voice. I also noticed that a voice actress' voice is reused frequently through out the game for many female NPCs. Judging from the fundraising for POE, I guess it's not difficult to hire a few more voice actors and actresses, unless there is something I miss. So this issue is one that worth looking into as it can affect the quality of a game, in my opinion. ------------------------------ And that's all for now. Thanks for your time.

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...

the skill checks in the game are so high and diverse, with level ups and points being so limited and far apart that I feel like I’m missing half the game. I’m about halfway through now and I’m struggling to care about anything because I can barely get half the information and due to skill checks. At least with being able to respec I could tediously go to the ship every 5 minutes and back to slot things into the categories I need, but not being able to and the checks being so high is just ruining the story and gameplay for me

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-maria-corina-machado-weekend-interview/ The privatization will be good for US corpos. Smedley would be proud.

She did that with anything that was in her range. I think I oneshot the final boss (well oneshot the stages of the final boss)... Fun times.

Quest Mechanical Matriarch is bugged. The hidden door in the Automech Production Facility won’t open. I don’t get an ‘open hidden door’ option. I’m playing on PS5. The quest seems to be bugged and I can’t progress. Anyone else with the same problem? I found someone on Reddit with the same issue but no workaround yet I guess. Would be nice if this could get fixed

Still playing Elden Ring. Farmed two Bandit's Curved Swords in 20 minutes. Lucky me? Now to choose the proper Ash of War...

the skill checks in the game are so high and diverse, with level ups and points being so limited and far apart that I feel like I’m missing half the game. I’m about halfway through now and I’m struggling to care about anything because I can barely get half the information and due to skill checks. At least with being able to respec I could tediously go to the ship every 5 minutes and back to slot things into the categories I need, but not being able to and the checks being so high is just ruining the story and gameplay for me

The choice is actually a fairly minor choice in the grand scheme of things and basically amount to whether you want to talk or fight to solve problems on the first planet. It doesn't align you with a faction. The faction alignment stuff plays out over a much longer timeline and multiple planets.

Well, I didn't enjoy my experience, though to be fair I did consciously refuse to initially engage with what was clearly a rather important choice. From my perspective my gripes would be that: 1) initial choice felt rather sudden and arbitrary and didn't provide enough context to commit to such decision (I do wonder why they didn't go with more traditional route of NPCs petitioning you to do something, and you fulfilling their request meant supporting their cause) 2) and coming from that not fulfilling that person's request (or even doing the complete opposite) seemed to have no effect whatsoever on either of parties involved. It's as if they cared more about me saying I side with them, rather then actually helping. Anyway, I think it is safe to say I have abandoned my playthrough as I feel no desire to go back, especially as it seems the first bit I already experienced haven't presented the game from it's best side. Will give it another go on a later date once I am more in the mood.

Well, from an RPG standpoint, isn't this a really good thing, that two different sets of player choices resulted in very strongly different outcome experiences? Isn't this what we want from an RPG?

I agree with maki, of course it feels great to slaughter everything that is in fron of you and see that nobody is standing. Though it feel like you are the only person on the planet which in return makes you feel regret that you'll be alone in ghost towns and wilderness. Maybe bodies could decay after a while and we could see more enemy spawning through portal or airships? Maybe to claim the land for themselfs. That would be so cool to have a mechanic like this that you never can expect whats going to happen next time you take a visit in place, more random encounters and watch patrols/bosses roaming around the planet minding their own business.

lol I actually like that. Too often in like Fallout I would clear out the same place of the same dudes over and over again and it felt like I had no effect on the world. This makes it feel like I'm actually DOING something. Also it can help to point out places I haven't explored yet.