Humanoid

That iBuyPower system is like buying a 5-to-7 year old upper-midrange machine today, realistically, never mind that the parts themselves are two generations old at this point. Actually it'd perform almost the same as my old 6700K + 290X system from circa 2015 that I just retired. I'd be aiming a bit higher, especially since you'll have no upgrade path with this and have a stated desire for it to last five years. I'd aim for something like this as a baseline of a value build: CPU: Ryzen 5600 (non-X) or Intel i5 12400F Motherboard: B550 for AMD and B660 for Intel RAM: 2x8GB DDR4 3200MHz CL16 (or 3600MHz CL18, almost identical performance) Video: RX 6600 Storage: 1TB NVMe SSD or some kind PSU: 550-650W is more than plenty Case to taste Tossed together a sample PCPartPicker list using only Amazon and Newegg parts because I don't know other US stores. Tried to choose parts that are from brands with wide distribution and which should be available at most stores though. PCPartPicker Part List CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600 3.5 GHz 6-Core Processor ($138.99 @ Newegg) Motherboard: MSI B550M PRO-VDH WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard ($119.99 @ Amazon) Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($50.99 @ Newegg) Storage: Western Digital Blue SN570 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($79.14 @ Amazon) Video Card: Asus DUAL Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Video Card ($209.99 @ Newegg) Case: Corsair 4000D Airflow ATX Mid Tower Case ($97.49 @ Amazon) Power Supply: Phanteks AMP 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($69.99 @ Newegg) Total: $766.58 Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-10-28 22:32 EDT-0400 Case is a bit overkill and oversized, because the microATX case market is pretty boring. Swap in a Cooler Master NR400 or Silverstone PS15 if you want to cut back there. A third-party CPU cooler is optional but grabbing a budget one like a Deepcool Gammaxx 400 or GTE is a good idea.

On my second attempt to play Persona 5 on my PS4 (a year or two back) I quit during the first dungeon because I was done playing for the night and couldn't find anywhere I was allowed to save. Looks like that hasn't changed with Royale, but hopefully being on PC it's less inconvenient, not least because I can actually stand to game for extended sessions on PC, as opposed to an hour or so when console gaming. I assume the game is not meaningfully moddable in this regard but when I do get around to starting again I'll have a look if there are any meaningful mods at all. Talking about Stardew Valley made me research that huge fan-made expansion a bit. Not going to commit to it just yet, but impressive that it seems to have its own comprehensive wiki just like the base game. Also for some reason I decided to spend a night playing Ultima 8 with the ScummVM integration of things like selectable high resolutions, object highlights and even a minimap! I always found wandering around Tenebrae to be cozy. Got up to the sorcery bit and stopped because I can't be bothered with the outright hassle that demonic rituals are. I thought the dark side's main attraction was its cozy convenience, dammit!

New gameplay innovation: a swamp that blows!

Stardew Valley is anything but cozy when you're sprinting across town to try to beat the clock. Sure, sometimes failing to do so might mean waiting until the next day. But it could also mean waiting to the next *year*. ETS2 is cozier now that I have €30M so when a stupid car rams me coming out of a toll gate, I don't get angry at unjustly being fined €400. Instead, I will gladly rack up another few sets of €400 fines to make sure the lesson sinks in. EDIT: To be fair, the AI mostly behaves reasonably outside toll booths and double-lane roundabouts. Maybe the devs just made a mistake and put the American AI into the European version of the game.

Yep, just finished up tonight's session, reloaded a previous autosave to ignore the main Forge leader and just did a sidequest for his underling instead, that was no problem at all. The plan for now will be to do Rebellion quests, until (assuming my expectations are correct) I take one that destroys my Forge reputation. Then who knows with the other two factions.

I came to the series late, played ME2 first and did so as Female Shepard simply because that's what I always do on the first run of any RPG. Nothing to do with the reputation of the voicework and I'm not sure I was aware of the Male Shep voice memes at the time. I then played ME1 as Male Shep to mix things up. Eventually I did export him to ME2 and played the game again, though I can't recall whether I actually ever finished that run. I either exported my original Shep or recreated her from scratch in ME3 (can't remember if I'd still have had the saves), but I rage quit that game very early on (I believe it was when the second dream sequence occurred) and have not returned to the series since. I don't remember anything notable whatsoever about Ms Grey's performance in Saints' Row 3. I would have used the default female voice there, pretty sure. Like ME3, SR4 is a game I'd like to forget.

No, nothing to do with the dictator faction, that was out the window many hours ago. To be specific my case was:

A couple of weeks ago I said here that Solasta Lost Valley was better than the original campaign. I'm not so sure about that anymore. Seems the deeper into I get into it, the more the seams appear, and the cut corners become more evident. Asset reuse increases a fair bit, and perhaps most importantly, their attempt at creating competing factions to choose between is their writing team biting off more than they can chew. No, no one should expect to be able to please all factions at the same time, reputation points ought to behave in a sensible way. But I expect better than to simply talk to a questgiver for one faction and having that immediately tank your reputation with another faction *which isn't even hostile to the first faction*. Looking into it a bit deeper and it appears this was done because eventually that other faction would have sent you to the same place to do something for them. They presumably wanted to make the quests mutually exclusive and did so in the clumsiest fashion possible. It's like, I dunno, Mr House who you've barely spoken to getting angry because you accepted a quest from the NCR to clear a Legion camp, because later in the script the game requires you to clear that camp on behalf of Mr House. And you haven't even done it, you've only accepted the quest. And you've only accepted the quest because in Solasta, talking to someone automatically accepts their quest. *facepalm*

Oh hey, just looked her up and she was in the Wing Commander TV series, how about that?

As a kid playing the Wing Commander FMV titles, I had no idea who Ginger Lynn was. Mrs Hamill sure did though.

Apparently I haven't played Skyrim since 2015. Would be tempted to if I could maybe get the GOG version for less than a tenner. Unfortunately my Steam version is no good because I never bought Dawnguard, which in itself would be okay because I don't care about Dawnguard, but some interesting mods require it. And you can't buy it at all now, let alone for a reasonable price. And the Game Pass version doesn't support SKSE so that's out too.

Them launching a GaaS game earlier this year, having it score 41 on Metacritic, and now unlaunching it for good is probably just as good a reason to boycott the company anyway.

I spent a couple of hours trying to get my wheel to play well on Forza Horizon 5 but in the end had to surrender and just accept the gamepad. I suppose we're at the stage where anything but a gamepad is an afterthought on multiplatform titles, even devices specifically designed for the genre of that particular game. Probably still exceptions for the more hardcore sims, but not for more arcadey titles like this. I do sort of remember the backlash when Freelancer came out with no joystick support...

It looked like something out of a techy Onion-like article but nVidia really are withdrawing the crippled 12GB 4080 from their lineup, wow. Definitely the right thing to do, but it'd take a lot to make Jenson swallow his pride like that. It'll obviously return as a 4070-series card of some sort, but who know when. Many countries including Australia have zero allocation of FEs. Hell, I think we had about a dozen 3080 FEs, which were exclusive to one retailer who sold them by raffle. Essentially they only existed to prove that the $1139AUD MSRP was totally legit and not false advertising.

I like to use Skip The Fade in conjunction with Skip Everything But The Fade for the optimal DA1 experience.

So I finally got around to retrieving my old saved games for various titles from my old PC which was retired almost two years ago now. A few relevant titles there which I might explore in the coming weeks, such as Dishonored 2, The Outer Worlds and Tyranny. But all said, the Pathfinder talk made me launch Pillars of Eternity. Well, I was in some sort of building. I don't know what I was doing there, so I exited the building. As soon as I did so I was accosted by someone who apparently did not like what I did inside the building, and attacked me. The combat AI was on so I just let my party beat up on the three enemies until they died, even if one of my own got knocked out in the process. I don't remember who that guy is anyway, or indeed who most of my party members are. I then quit the game, because I was too tired to figure out what was going on. I figured I'd come back when I'm more of sound mind. But whatever happens, at least we're out of that mudhole, Gilded Vale.

I only played through that part once, and I've never finished the game, so admittedly it's not a complete point of view. But ditching the tedious combat and tiresome party members make it a win by default.

I can honestly say that the Fade puzzles were the best part of Dragon Age 1. *ducks for cover*

Sad thing is that base Skyrim actually runs okay, apparently all the paid mods included with the Anniversary Edition absolutely tank performance. Now these "Creation Club" mods are made by users, not by Bethesda, so you might think that it's just a matter of amateurs making poor-quality mods and poor vetting of those mods by Bethesda. Hah, that would make far too much sense, and therefore it's firmly not the case. So yes, the problem has to do with mods. But it has nothing to do with the content of the mods, or how they're coded. Due to how Skyrim fundamentally works, the simple act of enabling a mod reduces performance even if that mod is literally blank and does nothing. The Anniversary Edition has 74 mods included. The game would be broken even if all 74 of those mods were dummy mods with no content whatsoever. The most insane part of course is the fact that this problem would have been identified had someone at Bethesda literally attempted to launch the game just a single time after enabling all those mods. But apparently that was too much work for them. Source: https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/xsebhw/dont_buy_skyrim_anniversary_edition_on_switch/iqkjth6/

I mean, based on the description of the other romanceable characters above, I'm assuming the threesome option is probably just romancing a two-headed ogre.

I looked into it a bit more and was surprised to see it has a turn-based mode, if only because I remember reading that Kingmaker had no such thing on launch (and now I've learned that it was added by a mod). That certainly helps sell it to me. Well, not in a literal sense, because I'll probably only try it once it lands on Game Pass, but yeah. Speaking of turn-based, I recently started Solasta's Lost Valley DLC, again in co-op of course. Seems to be a decent improvement, travel times are less oppressive, there's some limited choices now, and level design is a bit broader. Disappointed in not having access to any new classes compared to the base game, but no way am I paying for class DLC packs that add nothing else. EDIT: I know it's in a current Humble Bundle, and also on a fairly deep discount at GOG, but still too much for something that's probably a bit too hardcore for me. Incidentally the bundle made me roll my eyes a little at the BG "Faces of Good and Evil" DLC which is, uh, six portraits. I'd rather have horse armour...

And I'm confident I'd love it, if only I could find a way to swap places with 90s me.

I'm stunned that one game has somehow managed to generate five threads so far due to length, it's like this subforum consists of the news thread, the playing thread, and a thread for a game I know next to nothing about. Impressive to say the least.

It's just the announcement for Skyrim launching on Epic, as well as the recent launches on GOG and Switch (where it performs abysmally apparently). Nothing new for Steam or MS Store users.