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One thing that nobody warns you about when you get a job in the gaming industry is just how many meetings there are. There’re daily standups, gate reviews, sprint meetings, post-mortems, sign-offs, bridge meetings, war rooms, and the list goes on and on. But one of the most important meetings is called Triage. It generally occurs on a daily or weekly cadence, depending on what part of the dev cycle you are in. This is where Production, Design, Engineering, and QA get together and discuss the latest bugs. We go over each bug written since the last Triage and decide as a group how important the bug is, who is going to fix it, and when they need to fix it by. There are three main ways that this is measured. Severity: How bad the bug is, in the eyes of the user. Priority: How soon a bug should be fixed. Repro Rate: How hard, or easy, is it to run into the bug? How likely are players to see it? This is usually measured in attempts. For example, a crash bug could happen 100% of the time, or it could only happen under very specific conditions. And one thing that is easy to forget when you’re lost in a sea of bugs, is the scale of the audience. Sure, only 10% of the testers may experience a specific issue. But 8% of the modern AAA audience is hundreds of thousands of players. You would think, with that in mind, anything that affects at least 5% of players would be treated as a serious concern. But what if I told you that while only 0.5% of women are color-blind, 8% of men are? And how many modern games have color-blind filters? The answer is not nearly enough. Accessibility features are about giving players the tools they need to enjoy the game in whichever way works best for them. If you can add color-blind filters (https://colorblindgames.com/2021/03/29/colorblind-gaming-101-the-basics/) that’s roughly 5% more potential sales. According to the Entertainment Software Association, 85% of Americans under 18 play video games at least once a week. That comes out to 205 million players in the US alone. Five percent of which, comes to 8,000,000 people. Multiple that by $60 and we’re talking serious money. So why, in a world where the dollar drives everything, are accessibility features not standard? Why are so many developers leaving so many potential players behind? It would be easy for me to blame big bad CEO’s or shareholders for the problem. But the reality is, it’s not malicious. Like most issues in life, it’s more ignorance than anything else. People just aren’t as informed on the subject as they could be. But that is starting to change. The industry is starting to come around and they are making serious investments in multiple ways. (alt text: Ishihara test was invented to measure color blindness. The image above uses different shades to create the image of Toadstool from Super Mario Bros) source: Obsidian has been leading the way for longer than most. Well before it was “cool” to make accessible games, titles like Pillars of Eternity (2013) were giving players multiple color-blind filters, detailed difficulty options, and a large suite of audio/video settings to let players decide what “good” looks like. Back in 2020 Grounded introduced the Arachnophobia filter. A setting that is now becoming default in many horror/survivor games. Hogwarts Legacy added it, but only after NorskPL released a community mod for the setting. My favorite is actually from the most recent version, Grounded 2. Can you detect the feature? It’s one of the first things you see when you start the game. (alt text: Screenshot of Grounded 2 main menu showing custom face button graphics used to inform the player where on the face the button is located.) Many of you probably pointed to the Accessibility shortcut. And that is a great example of mindful design. How do you expect people to turn on the accessibility features if they need the accessibility features enabled to get to the accessibility features? But that’s not my favorite. My new favorite is the A and Y buttons. Notice what’s different? I bet you Xbox Certification noticed that these are not authorized representations of the face buttons on an Xbox controller. But I love that they saw through the rule to find the intent. Instead of confusing players, these actually provide more information. It’s a tiny change that can have a big impact. Heck, I’m not even color-blind and these helped me after I spent the previous few weeks playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, where the A and B buttons are swapped. And that’s the key to accessibility features. Not telling players how to play, but providing the options for them to play how they want to play. And they are not alone. The industry as a whole has finally seen the benefits of expanding their games and tearing down walls. For example: the Entertainment Software Association (a trade association representing the major video game developers and publishers across the industry) recently rolled out their Accessible Games Initiative. They are leading by example and starting with updating their storefronts to include Accessibility Tags. Much like you can browse by genre or feature, now you can filter games by which ones support the accessibility features you care the most about. (alt text: A black background with brightly colored stickers in the shapes of Xbox icons and accessibility products like prosthetic legs, wheelchairs, and seeing eye dogs.) And they are not alone. A whole market is forming around consulting, reviewing, and teaching about accessibility. People are getting together and demanding “Never about us, without us.” From Accessibility Labs, a startup in Tempe, AZ of former QA professionals passionate about Accessibility testing. To Microsoft’s Xbox Accessibility Guidelines, requirements that titles they publish must meet. But Tommy, I’m a developer and I want to do better. How can I make sure everyone is able to enjoy my hard work? Well, I’m glad you asked, imaginary developer person. Because while I’m passionate about the subject, I also acknowledge I’m just as ignorant as most. But together, we can work towards fighting that ignorance, in our own minds, and in others. Even the smallest changes, like the button prompts above, can have a huge impact. Bring on Accessibility experts during your design phase, don’t wait until you’re about to launch. Don’t be like so many others before you that designed fully fleshed out UI’s that rely on a cursor to navigate. Only to find out down the road this is not very accessible for people with fine motor issues. Making these changes during the design phase will save you thousands, if not millions, of dollars down the line. Embrace your lack of knowledge and seek out the experts. There are resources available to developers of all shapes and sizes. Are you a small developer that wants to do better, but just doesn’t know where to start? Support other independent gamers like Accessibility Labs. Have a good idea of what you want to do, but want to make sure you aren’t forgetting anything? Check out Microsoft’s Xbox Accessibility Guidelines. Want to support the effort in other ways? Reach out to AbleGamers, who have been fighting this fight for over 20 years. Enjoy this article and want to know more? Check out Derek Gruber on Seattle Indie’s Accessibility Awareness Month episode. The last thing I want to do is trivialize game and UX design. Accessibility is just one of countless aspects that must be considered when designing a game and it’s UI. What’s most important is that you are making the effort. Instead of asking why you should add an option, ask why you shouldn’t. When in doubt, trust the player to decide what is best for themselves. Not every feature is going to be a home run. But as long as we, as a community, are working towards improving, the rising tide will raise all ships. Sources & Resources Game Developer - Nintendo, Microsoft, EA and others unite to make accessibility messaging a priority Washington Post - Accessibility option in survival game ‘Grounded’ turns my arachnophobia into a thrill Colorblind Games - Colorblind Gaming 101: The Basics Mashable - Video games taught me I was colorblind but it's not always a friendly lesson Nexus Mods - Arachnophobia mode Seattle Indies - Accessibility Awareness Month Interview Series: Steve Saylor and Derek Gruber Able Gamers - Combating Social Isolation Through Play Accessibility Labs Microsoft - Xbox Accessibility Guidelines Entertainment Software Association (ESA) - Entertainment Software Association Introduces the Accessible Games Initiative to Provide Players with Information About Accessibility Features in Video Games

After updating the game to play the "into the abyss" update, the game crashes on the "logging in" message on the main menu after the "press any button" message. This regards Grounded 2 on PC through the Xbox app.

Hey everyone. Hope y'all have been doing well. It's been a while since I signed in. I keep forgetting my password. Gwen & I are in Toronto tonight. We're doing a cross-country baseball tour. We're going to all thirty parks and a few (or more than a few) college and minor league parks as well. We've always wanted to do this and its past time to stop putting it off. So, Friday, Saturday & Sunday we're watching the Jays take on the Twins. Last week we got to see the Brewers & Rays in Milwaukee. We started out by seeing the Wisconsin Lady Badgers softball team sweep Maryland in 3 games. Today we visited the Royal Ontario Museum followed by dinner at Gyubees. Had a great time. Now just relaxing at the hotel. She's talking to Bri and I'm catching up with you fine folks. Life is good guys. It's a beautiful thing.

Anything with a timer is a hard pass for me. Spirit eater, timer to respond in Alpha Protocal, etc... I want to brainlessly farm every question mark on the map and be ridiculously overpowered by chapter end.

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.

So I take it, starting the 24th, I'll be all alone in the forum because everyone else is playing this at launch, right?

After deadlines at work, deal with deadlines in game

Ok slackers, I bought Blood of the Dawn Walker and started playing it. I'm just about done with the prologue, although I restarted, so I've clocked about 5 hours in. The story is very good. Interesting characters, good setting, great villains, and engaging quests just in the prologue. It plays a lot like the Witcher series, except the main character isn't a moody bitch like Geralt. It's a solid RPG. The timed quests are interesting. Nothing so far is timed, but you have limited slots of time to use on quests throughout the day (and I'd guess night.) That means you can't do everything, but you have as much time as you want to complete the quests you choose to do. So you have choices to make and it is reactive with consequences. In the prologue I had to make some tough choices that then played out in the story. I'm liking it so far and it is clearly designed for replayability.

Zero Company is fantastic. I played about 10 hours yesterday, which I probably haven't done with a game since Xcom 2 came out. It runs well on my very mid computer. It does struggle a bit, but not in places where it matters (ie movies and qte stutter a bit, but gameplay is fine.) I only have 16gb of ram. If you liked the Clone Wars series, this is basically the game for you. It really digs into the lore of the animated shows. It feels like Bad Batch. The characters in your crew are all pretty interesting and you have a lot of customization options. It is still very story-centric, so that hurts the replay value a bit, but I am pretty sure I will still get at least a couple playthroughs out of it. Just doing a male and female Hawk alone is different enough. You can recruit a bunch of randos and ignore the main companions as well. It's probably still more Chimera Squad than Xcom 2, but it has more depth than the former. Combat is fun. I started on normal and it is a bit easy, but I can see it getting harder as I move away from fighting droids. Like the show, droids are comically bad.

The tiles burst the Tuesday before last. Luckily, even though here it was the orthodox Easter week, I got a couple of contractors to help me strip the damaged part of the floor and pour a layer of concrete. Once dry I painted it white, then added colours to have some orientation. I then threw forks down and sprayed outlines. And spend a couple of days painting faces for the cats from morning 'till way after midnight. Then spread a few hundred actual wooden forks painted as cats over it. The floor hasn't hardened yet, so all I got is a peak of the shiny new floor. I am leaving it overnight and am going to shine it tomorrow then varnish it to protect it from sunlight.

Well, tis being an odd mixture of times for me. After two years and 1 month since my father passed, we finally wrapped up the estate, sold the family house. My life is pretty much now in a 100 sq ft storage unit, and I'm renting a room while I do the hunt for my first house. Having a little debate on the potential for putting up insulated / powered summerhouse/workshop in the garden of wherever I end up buying. Once that's done.. slowly unpack and figure out where my life is going. Also doing that slight mental replay where one of my closest friends just killed our 15 odd-year friendship and I have no idea what actually happened or drove them to that decision. So that's a little odd. Still, adapting and figuring it out. I guess now I'm not having to deal with all the things on my evenings and weekends, I can possibly start catching up on books and computer games and tv shows and wotnot....

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.

Stalker 2 is pretty good now with the expansion installed and the engine upgrade. I made it 2/3 through. It's a very long game so that's not really a detraction. the DLC has much better traditional single player level design, and also a fair amount of shoehorning, as you would expect. It kinda looks and feels like a real game now as opposed to a weekend project or steam greenlight thing.

I replayed Chaos Gate: Daemonhunters with both DLC. The game has changed/improved a lot since release. More mission types. More classes. More events. Far better experience and the assassins add interesting ways to take on different missions.

Drova. Started the game, got to the first settlement (camp; spent a few short gaming sessions cutting the treants in the woods, 5 minutes per treant), got through a random cave to some ruins, grabbed a big axe while dodging the harpies. Could not use the axe - it required 74 skill points spent and I had 28. On a more serious note, the system requirements, controls, and the saving system are very appealing and the gameplay somewhat reminds of Gothic but better and with a custom PC.

I finally finished my first run through Black Geyser. Overall, the game was very good and I enjoyed plaing it very much. It is definitely an old-school cRPG in every way. But, the fact that it was a low-budget crowd-funded game does show. The writing needed more work (not just the quality of the writing but also such things as dialogue branching and reactivity), and the area levels were often too simple, small, and repetitive. The main quest was okay, but I liked many of the side quests more, including especially the companion quests which had multiple parts to them. The companions themselves were a mixed bag; some were really interesting and well-written while others were obviously thrown in at the last minute. The good news is the that the developers are very good about accepting and listening to player/fan feedback. There were a couple of side quests where bugs were preventing me from completing them. After I used their built-in bug reporting system, they very quickly got back to me with solutions. Then, I used their correspondence with me to send back to them a lot of my constructive feedback about the game, to which they were very enthusiastically receptive. Their devs are even active in posting on the game's Steam forum! So, I have high expectations and a lot of excitement now for their next game, Avaria. ************************ I also finished my most recent attempt at playing Humankind. This time I was able to go all the way into the fourth of the five eras of the game before I finally quit. I play this (and other similar) strategy/4X games as sandbox games where I find ways to turn off the war/conquest part of the game. I build my empire and the AI builds its empire and we both stay clear of each other. This worked great in Humankind and the game remained interesting to me right up until I finally entered the industrial era. At that point, the game started to drag and become tedious and repetitive, and also somewhat frustrating (esp. the pollution mechanic), and so I decided I had got my money's worth from the game and I quit. ************************* Now I've begun my first playthrough of Dark Envoy (from the makers of Tower of Time from several years ago). So far so good, but clearly only because I'm playing on the Easy difficulty setting (there is a Story setting below this). It is very clearly an ARPG rather than a cRPG, and often-times even more a dungeon-crawler. It's lots and lots of combat encounters one after another, but at least on Easy I am able to get through them pretty quickly and without taking too much damage. I am even able to use their AI to control some of my party members while I only manage my casters. Works pretty well. The story has been very interesting so far, and I continue to like its steampunk setting with its mix of high-magic and advanced technology.

good afternoon im playing on pc through the xbox app and when i open grounded i cant get past the loading screen. is there any fix to this soon?

This weekend I did an Olympic Tri. I did the same race 2 years ago and I was about 3 minutes faster, but I don't really know what that means. I'm consistent? I finished in 2 hours and 25 minutes. Anyways, the swim felt great, the ride was 4 loops and was a bit of work, and the run was hard but I kept the pace I wanted. I ended up 6th in my age group and 28th overall (out of about 200 races). Now I'm back at work and the summer is over.

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. I have finished the main story. Somewhere mid-Act 2, I irreversibly broke the progression due to the developers' brilliant idea to make an NPC's survival critical for the main quest (the next NPC would not spawn otherwise) and not give the player an indicator that it was so (no "the thread of prophecy is severed" message), while the said NPC very explicitly asked to be stabbed in the face repeatedly. Thus, 10 hours later, I completed 1 mandatory dungeon in the area, explored quite a lot, and in general was not anyhow inclined to reload, while hoping that there was an NPC-unrelated option to proceed, like it was in Act 1. On a somewhat related note, I admire that Obsidian games are quite resilient to the player's actions. So, after a few more hours and a few guides, I realised that I got stuck. I used the console to respawn the NPC, but it still led to a black screen in a cutscene a bit later. Thus, the only remaining option was just to activate the following quest, which I did. The journal description for the main quest did not update, but it went reasonably well otherwise - the in-game story proceeded and the next area became accessible. At that point I was getting quite tired, while the inhabitants of the final area were fairly spongy and extremely similar to the previously-encountered foes. So I decided to try running to the nearest settlement, asking where the McGuffin was, and going straight for it. After studying the fog-covered map and visiting one burnt down settlement which lacked any useful information, I decided to go to the largest roundish shape on the highest mountain. When I reached the door, the invisible friend helpfully pointed out that it was the point of no-return for the region. I was pleasantly surprised, hard-saved, and entered the dungeon. Every other room contained a locked fog door and a duo of mini-bosses, which made the progression slower. By that time, I was relying more on the bow (Robbie's bow which I never gave to the quest starter), than my daggers for the non-human boss battles, so it was more a matter of patiently head-shotting things and hiding, than actively running around. It was not the most exciting endeavour, but I got through and picked up the McGuffin. As I exited the dungeon, I pulled out the guide and cleared the dungeons required for the secret ending. Ironically, the triple-lock cave I had found earlier was the end-game dungeon (the quest journal still did not point to it). After a lot of chatting, I faced the final boss who went down easier than a random corpse eater in the final snowy area. The slides showed some of the outcomes for the regions and NPCs, though I remembered only a half of them. To summarise it, while the beginning and the QoL features are reasonably well-made, the quality falls as the game progresses and the narrative never truly grabs attention. Overall, it is a fun sandbox game and should one be satisfied with the first 20 or so hours, it should provide it. The most positive aspects are largely the accessibility ones - the controls are rebindable, the saving system is well made (several rotating auto- and quick saves of very reasonable size of 1-2MB), and there are difficulty options. The system requirements are as good as they can be for an open-world game, and Tainted Grail uses Unity instead of UE5 (may that unoptimised junk be sunsetted soon). There is a lot of exploration and it feels quite engaging in the first area, while the combat is surprisingly functional for the first-person camera. At the start, there are a lot of options for dealing with obstacles and freedom of movement. The visual style is appealing overall and the forest looks gorgeous. The range of abilities and their synergy with equipment provide a wide variety of builds. It is also incredibly convenient to be able to open the unlimited stash and fast travel at any point out of dungeons (there are 3 large open maps with smaller separate dungeons inside them). However, as the game progresses, the cracks start to show. The boss arenas teleport you to the middle, forcing you to start the battle in the Detected state, the main quest breaks without warning when you kill an NPC, the ground itself does not have collision boxes in some places (the Unstuck button usually helps; if it does not, there are console commands and reloading). In terms of balance, a random undead in the final area was hitting harder than the final boss. In terms of story, while the main plot is generally fine and leans towards environmentalism, the environmental storytelling and lore are lacking (I was pulling fresh fruit and alcoholic beverages from bookshelves in an ancient castle). Additionally, the drawback of having a lot of killable characters is that none of them can be central to the story and, in some cases, the range of dialogue options is baffling. The demographic of the human opponents is also puzzling, though the combination of the South-Asian PC who goes and gets things done and either incompetent or malicious NPCs amuses me.

I finished ToEE after about 90 hours. Well I defeated Zuggtmoy after that time and assumed the game would end but more about that later As I mentioned its the best adaption of D&D rules and mechanics of any D&D game I have ever played and the combat strategy is always exciting I had many difficult fights and I loved how I would be defeated and then have to learn different spells or come back later. So for example when I was clearing the 2nd level of the High Priests I was able to defeat both the Air and Fire factions relatively easy by using a simple approach create a bottleneck in an entry passage so they have to advance through a limited space use AOE spells like Grease and Stinking Cloud so they get weakened this made is easier for my 2 tanks to fight combat against less enemies and I could use AOE spells in the bottleneck areas...Fireball is always my friend But this strategy failed with the Water High Priest because of the Juggernaut monster who was too powerful so I came back later at higher level and spells like Stoneskin and was successful after about 5 attempts Then I got Thrommels Sword as a reward for freeing him but only much later and that single weapon made a huge difference in battles, I gave it to my barbarian. This must be the best sword in the whole game? When I first got to the elemental nodes I thought I would be able to defeat most enemies using my standard strategy but I quickly learnt a hard lesson that wasn't going to work against the Demon bosses to get the gems. So I ended up using and learning buffs I typically wouldn't focus on like Remove Fear and ways to boost my saves against the Hezrou stench But these were all very challenging battles with the Balor being the hardest of all enemies but I persevered and Thrommels Sword made a huge difference Then I got to Zuggtmoy and ended up taking the gems and banishing her without a major final battle which I wanted. So I restored and waited for her to attack me and it was an incredibly difficult battle especially with all her fungus summons 4/8 of my party died in this final battle but I did kill her and I thought " wow, game over. That was exhilarating " But then you get to travel to Verbobonc for an massive expansion added by the Co8 mod , completely unexpected. Could my experience get any better So I have just started on the Verbobonc expansion and its really appreciated because I wasn't ready to stop playing this game

It must be so horrible for Sawyer and the other creative people at Obs right now. The two new IPs that they created with a lot of their passion and vision and talent and effort they have been ordered to kill/scrap/shelve (along with all other passion projects they may have been working on), and then they're ordered to all work on just one project that is an IP that belongs to someone else and over which thy won't have full creative control. I have to wonder if some of these people, including Sawyer himself, are contemplating just walking away from it all in disgust.

Played and finished Avowed. Pretty good game overall, would give it a 7/10 "Good". I'd also probably pick up a sequel, depending on where they intend to go with it (there is plenty of the living lands we haven´t been to, certainly would not mind seeing more of it), though likely not if they're going to charge 70EUR again. Forced dodge/parry based combat are not really my thing and just getting out of the way by just sidestepping an attack not being a real option kind of annoyed me. Aggro rules, if there are any, are rather opaque. There really did not seem to be any consistency on who mobs focus on. Even if you're in another room there´d be one that magically would chase you down to beat your skull in. Anyway, it obviously wasn't enough of a bother for me to not finish the game, but expletives were used at time. I thought the overall story was intriguing, though I do feel they dropped a bit too much information too early, by the end of the first area, if you're a bit of a completionist, you pretty much know the gist of what is going on and it feels as if the rest of the game just fills in the outline. The Scatterscarp major decision kinda felt icky to me, especially a scholar PC and/or Giatta should've been able to give more insight as to the consequences of one of the choices. It just felt like the devs were actively trying to rope you into a specific decision. The whole political angle to things, on the other hand, felt like it turned out a lot more black and white than I had hoped, which was a bit of a shame. Endgame choice While you appear "stuck" with your companions I did enjoy the ability to "agree to disagree" with them. That said there were, especially later in the game, some jarring inconsistencies in their reactions, where they'd praise you for something when it is happening and then scold you when talking about it in camp, or vice-versa. There was also the one quest near the end that made absolutely zero sense (the one with the stolen books in the archives) as you're given absolutely zero context so you're just making a decision blindly resulting in companion reactions that entirely out of left field. Thankfully that was the exception. Anyway, enjoyed my time with the game, would recommend (but not at the launch price). Aside from that I played through what is available of Subnautica 2 so far. Mostly it is more Subnautica, so if you didn´t like the prior ones, well, don't bother, but if you did, good times! The one thing that sort of annoyed me is the amount of hostile wildlife compared to the first one(s). I feel it cheapens the experience. It's a bit hard to explain, but feeling vulnerable and avoiding enemies as you didn´t know how dangerous they actually were felt like a big part of the earlier games. Having bits taken out of you on the regular kinda makes it less scary, if that makes sense? Curious to see how the game develops but they're off to a good start at least.

I've been continuing on with my very first BG3 playthrough and am now, finally after months!, almost at the end, about to head out to the final confrontation. And, nothing has changed in my view of the game. As I've said before, the game is fantastic on such things as graphics, cinematics, and cut scenes, the game is very big, and its main story is quite epic and compelling (though with some questionable areas). But in so many other ways, ways that are much more important to a CRPG, it is a weak game. Most of the companions were not at all likeable, with the mild exceptions only of Karlach and, surprisingly, Minthara. The rest were all whiney, angst-ridden prima donnas. I especially hated what they had done to both Jaheira and Minsc, and was utterly appalled by the "new canon" for Viconia. The side quests were meh, and a lot of the areas in Act II were a slog. Despite the claim that combat encounters were/would be fewer in number and more interesting, I found the number of encounters to be no less/different than in any other RTwP RPG and, as I'd expected for TB combat, very frustrating and aggravating and boring. Thankfully, due to mods allowing me to go with larger parties, I was able to breeze through virtually every combat encounter within 2-3 rounds. Not being able to "pause" the game during real-time exploration was a huge pain, especially when trying to be stealthy (and being forced to go into TB mode), as was how party movement is set up, with, for example, party members walking through traps and mines they themselves just announced having discovered. And the UIs were atrocious across the board. The quick access bar was surely the worst, but other UIs were pretty bad/non-intuitive as well, including inventory management. This is not by any means an exhaustive list of the ways the game falls short, but covers some of the biggest failings in my personal opinion. My rating of the game would be a C+ (77/100).

I hated Star Craft 2's campaign(s). Not the gameplay, mind you, but the endless retcons, the character assassinations, the ludicrous storyline and cashing in on a highly popular franchise* by releasing a single game's worth of content in three full-priced installments. *Man, now that I spelled it out, I realize that all of that also applies to the new Star Wars Trilogy.

Crimson Desert: Taming a pet requires "100 appreciation points" - you can only get 25pts per day (petting it). Dogs generally stay in place so you can return to a spot each day to pet it. The cats, so far, because you have to pick them up and pet while cradling them in arms, then put them down again, do not stay in place (they tend to run off) and if I return to an area I can't ever seem to find it again to pet it again. Hadn't seen a cat I liked much anyway so I was eh. Then I saw --- a sleek black cat! It reminds me of Mr. Black! I must have it! So I picked it up. But if I set it down again, how would I find it again? So ... I never set it down again. Made Kliff stand in place, doing nothing, for 3 "days" while I did other IRL things, petting kitty each day. Until finally: Forget anything else, this game is now a 10/10. Yes.

The VPs you speak to at the end of the Mystery of mental modulators have vanished The quest icon takes you to the room they should be in but the room is empty on arrival. Even when loading previous save games There’s a few new posts on Reddit about it with others saying it’s a fresh new bug that is likely a result from the most recent update

Greetings Watchers! We've updated the Public Beta branch for the Pillars of Eternity Turn-based Mode! It is now live on all available platforms. Thank you for your continued support and feedback! Combat and Mechanics Initiative has been reworked so that the first turn initiative will now always correctly match the displayed initiative value on the character sheet. The new formula for Initiative is: Base RTwP Recovery * 2 + 1 All modifiers to initiative happen after the above calculation. First turn initiative values will now more closely resemble initiative values seen on subsequent turns. The minimum initiative a character may achieve can never be below 1. Initiative now displays positive and negative values of contributing modifiers in its tooltip. Adragan can no longer take multiple turns with 0 initiative between them. Patients in the Sanitarium should now correctly take actions in TBM combat. Changing active modal within a modal group should now update immediately in TBM instead of on the following turn. Second chance should now work correctly in TBM. Guardian Spirit ability on Ancestor Pendant now works correctly in TBM. Pŵgras now properly move into position when casting Autumn's Decay in TBM. Chanter's Chants now go on cooldown as a group when a chant is switched. Resolved an issue where drakes summoned by chanter invocations could sometimes freeze the client when the drake despawned. Summons created by a chanter will now properly despawn any prior summons in TBM. Fixed an issue where repeatedly re-summoning summons in TBM combat could cause them to become unable to move. Master's Call will now correctly break engagement in TBM. Visage of Concelhaut now works correctly in TBM. Cleansing Flame will now jump to a new target it its current target is killed in TBM. Many spells and abilities that deal unscaling damage indirectly (through status effects and other means) now properly receive increased lethality while in TBM. Fixed an issue with Kalakoth's Minor Blights incorrectly granting immediate subsequent turns after attacking in TBM. Fixed an issue that caused enemies with ranged weapons to sometimes become stuck when needing to move closer to their targets in TBM combat. Characters now properly consider their reach distance when moving into range in TBM. Fixed an issue where patrolling characters could sometimes become stuck instead of properly engaging in TBM combat. Using quick items or disarming traps while spiritshifted in TBM will no longer cause the turn to become stuck. Initiative is now accounted for on attacks made from outside of combat. Overlapping Unconscious and Prone effects no longer allow a character to move freely. The Firebrand spell is now a free action. Push/pull spells outside of TBM combats will no longer prevent characters from being responsive. Fixed a case where teleporting creatures could become invisible and untargetable in TBM. Cancelling a cast action and re-initiating it no longer calculates incorrect initiative values. Cast actions can no longer be cancelled outside of a character's turn. Being interrupted while pending a cast action will now properly remove the target icon from the world. Fixed a case where characters knocked out by DoT damage at the start of their turn could cause combat to be stuck waiting. Grimoire swap cooldowns are now respected in TBM. Fixed a case where ranged attacks in TBM would sometimes fail after execution. Many creatures that were not using spells and abilities in TBM should now make greater use of their arsenal. Potion of Major Recovery no longer adds duration to hostile effects instead of reducing it. Delaying a turn no longer triggers pulsing (and similar) effects when starting the delayed turn. Abilities that require a certain amount of time in combat before being available/unavailable now track TBM turns properly. Heart of Fury will now properly consume action points in TBM. Enemies that trigger second chance mechanics in TBM combat will now properly stand back up. Several ticking or bouncing effects no longer focus the camera when triggering. The Fighter's Charge ability now animates and repositions properly in TBM. Engagement now properly breaks when using the charge ability. Delayed Fireball now resolves properly if combat ends before it detonates. Ray spells should now behave more correctly in TBM. Visual and Audio Ground targeted pulsing FX will now display a persistent effect in-between active pulses in TBM combat. Cipher focus HUD FX are once again visible. User Interface and Interaction Added a keybinding and HUD button to toggle TBM freely while outside of combat. Spacebar is now the default key to end turn while in a TBM combat. Added keybindings for Delay turn, End turn, and the Combat Speed slider. Smart camera may now be optionally disabled. Accuracy tooltips can once again be viewed in the inventory screen. Instant speed spells and abilities now correctly display as Free Actions in TBM. Camera will now properly center on the start of a characters turn when pulsing effects are present on the character. Many remaining bugs where spells and abilities mention durations in seconds instead of rounds (in TBM) have been squashed. End turn and delay turn HUD buttons now have proper tooltips. Select All and Scouting UI buttons should no longer be partially unclickable. Burial Isle cutscenes no longer prevent future actions from being cancelled or other strange behaviors. Initiative value in character sheet will no longer overlap DR values in cases where many unique DR values exist. Several enchantment descriptions now display correctly in TBM. Fixed an issue where the combat log would display erratically on certain resolutions. Duration of summoned creatures is now displayed in rounds. Targeting indicators for bouncing spells should behave better in TBM. Added breakpoint markers to combat speed slider in TBM. Displayed endurance pips will now match across different UI. Localization Resolved translation errors with Wizard's Wall of Draining spell on Polish language.

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Heck yeah!

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.

Tim Cain is back at Obsidian!

Started Outer Worlds 2 (using Gamepass) and played through the tutorial. It was great. The graphics are improved from the original. So far so good. I don't think it will win you over if you didn't like the original, but it seems like a solid sequel so far.

What a great blog! As a gamer with a disability (I have a serious hearing impairment), I am so very glad people in the industry (and within Obsidian) are taking accessibility seriously. I require captioning for everything voice-related. But even with captioning pretty common these days, some games leave out crucial bits of the game from their captioning system, such as backgound chatter/banter. It's so very frustrating to hear the sound of someone saying something, but then not be able to know what they said. Keep up the good work! And thanks!!

Hey everyone. Hope you guys are all doing well in this crazy f---d up world we find ourselves in. I was unaware of Charlie Kirk until this morning. Gwen and I have been exploring Zion National Park since August. We've been staying at Watchman Campground mostly but we did backpack out to Lava Point and primitive camped for a few nights. This is by far one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen. Hanging out in Salt Lake City now. Then taking a trip down I-40 to Tennessee. I have some business to wrap up there bore heading back to Wisconsin. Life has been pretty good. We had almost no cell coverage in the park and almost never turned the radio on. The world is a wonderful place if you can just divorce yourself from all the negativity. Hope you guys are all ok. It's been a while.

Also finished Zero Company. I am somewhere in the middle on it. The gameplay is good enough and the story, while better than XCOM, is still bellow KOTOR for me. But to be fair, while I like Star Wars, I am not part of the Star Wars cult. The game definitely picks up as it goes and that keeps you engaged and in that aspect is much better than XCOM which is kind of flat in that regard. The characters are likable. What I don't like is that they overly forced the cinematic aspect of the game. Wrong game format for that in my opinion. At 32 hours (for a full playthrough) it's not a long game, but then again if it was much longer with no expansion of gameplay along the way I think it would have overstayed its welcome. I recommend it at a discount, especially because it can do with some more patching.

@ShadySands speak of the devil. Glad to see you're ok.

I didn't get any PMs so I assume it wasn't one the games I have listed. Though I probably have a hundred more to add by now

Subnautica 2 too. Having fun so far. As @Hurlshort mentioned, there is nothing wildly different about it. Also having fun with HoMaM Olden Era. The nostalgia is of the charts on this one and so far it's not losing steam.

Just found this is listed as a known bug on https://outerworlds2.obsidian.net/issue-tracker "Executives at ACHQ cannot be found at their office when trying to turn in Indisposable Agent for Hire AR-130353"

Have you found a way to fix it? Because I’m also having that problem as of last night.

i'm just waiting for them to kiss

The problem here is MS having a target of 30% profit for their games. So if Avowed/TOW2 came in at 20% profit, which by any measure would be a success story, the mere mention of them "not meeting sales targets" sets off an avalanche of "the games bombed/were a failure" type of unfair asinine comments which undermines those games and Obsidian's reputation. :(

640KB should be enough for anyone.

At least their hips won't lie

I'm beginning to understand why you liked Rings of Power so much.