Tigranes

The LPs are big enough a job for me, unfortunately, though I'd still love to play. You could wait until I have my PhD, but that's similar to waiting for Blank. What we really need is a procedurally generated Dungeon Master.

Delivery has so much to do with the storytelling, and I think that's where Bio lost me. KOTOR1 onwards they've been very determined at fusing together their cutscenes, dialogue scenes, normal play camera perspective, writing, etc. all together into their particular brand of 'cinematic' experience, and it just really bores me. Even if we set aside any concern for 'deep' stuff and say, what's cool/badass/sets off your inner six year old boy, I find Irenicus' cutscenes a lot more vivid and 'cool' than all the cutscenes I've completely forgotten in KOTOR1, or what little I've seen of the ME series. It just looks all too similar to a bad movie for me to imagine it as anything otherwise. Increasingly I think that it's not just a case of good/bad writing, ratio of cool stuff, or technology, but how different genres and styles cultivate different ways in which we treat the game content and imagine things off it. I don't know if I would claim BG1/2's plot to be any better or different than Bio's later offerings, but it was about the way in which the isometric perspective, sparse voice acted lines, the UI, and all of those other things combined to make you imagine the world in certain ways. ME just never gets me going in that way - and, in fact, neither did TW2, although I really liked that game.

Nevertheless, this time it goes quite smoothly, as we still have the firepower of Nepenthe and others to quickly dispose of proxies then deal damage to Aec'Letec. Before the first paralysis is over... ...the big baddie has fallen, and the survivors pass round a giant bucket of sweet, sweet XP. In honor of Walsingham, we immediately loot his disgusting corpse and move on to recruit from the nearest tavern. The result is Pidesco, a strong, intelligent but rather flatulent fellow who prefers to disguise himself as a giant cat. He will inherit Wals' two-handed sword, but not his armour, and steal the Gauntlets of Dexterity from Nepenthe just so that a stationery rock doesn't kill him in one blow. Pidesco: Meow. We report the demise of Aec'Letec to Dwarfus Questgiverus, who walks away without handing us a single piece of gold or XP. Pidesco remains on zero XP. And so we are at Baldur's Gate. All other characters are now level 6 or 7 - due to rapidly increasing XP requirements for new levels, the likes of Gorth have pretty much caught up. Originally, I intended to show these two outcomes and have you guys talk about what I should do, but I sort of quicksaved over everything. So, given that we have technically abided by the house rules, it's onward and upward to Sarevok! Gorth: But you know, Sarevok has even higher saves and magic resistance, right? Even without full SCS? Tale: Yeah, we probably can't paralyse him like Aec'Letec. Pidesco: Meow.

We return to the start of the battle. I do get to pause in time, and maneuvre the characters better. Sorophyx is still paralysed. The tactics are essentially the same; get the proxies, stay out of Aec'Letec's way, distract with monsters. This time we're a little more successful at doing this. Then, a game-changer; the wand of paralysis, as usual. Last time I had thought it wouldn't really work on him, but we now know that it does, every once in a while. This gives us plenty of time to mop up the proxies and get to work on him. But wait, you might ask. Walsingham doesn't seem to have moved at all between the last two screenshots! Walsingham: Oh, buggersnips. He was paralysed and doomed just before we paralysed Aec'Letec. It can't be helped, now.

Aec'Letec is Badly Injured; thus, more than half dead. We cast a magic missile, and Tale's memorised spells return to him entirely. Tale: WIIIIIILD MAAAGE! YEAH! Sorophyx: You know you cast about 400 spells before this one good surge? Tale: I'M WIIIIILD MAAAGE! The paralysis wears off, but he is at near death with several summons left to distract him. We can do this! We can- Oh, dude. I think this had to do with SCS's new targeting AI (either that, or now that I notice in the screenshot, the summons were dead), but when Tale hit Aec'Letec with a magic missile the dude turned around, ran straight to him, and took him out with a single blow. Obviously, I couldn't pause in time because multiplayer games have introduced command lag for the spacebar. :gah: It's difficult to say where we should go from here. By our own ironman house rules, a party wipe means the entire campaign is over, but due to BG's hard-coded protagonist rule, if Tale dies, we can reload. Now, technically, only Sorophyx is alive at this point, but Aec'Letec is near death. It's impossible to know, with some hit-and-run, who might have prevailed. Just for kicks, I decided to have another go, if only to see what happens...

TrueNeutral, too, bursts a little later, although Sorophyx in his invisibility escaped the worst. (You can see him finally participating in the battle, here.) The ghasts are weak and easily disposed of, but the loss of party members dramatically scales down our combat efficiency. By this point, all the cult proxies are dead, and we have a fair number of monsters, so it's time to hit on Aec'Letec. Unfortunately... We both knew it would end this way, Wals. Walsingham: Hey, I didn't think curry was THAT bad for you. By this point we're desperate, and Tale launches a wand of paralysis - and to my surprise, it works! I don't remember the wand working on Aec'Letec at all before. I should mention that he has a lot of magic resistance and great saves, so mages are almost useless against him. Without his MR the fight could be over a lot quicker, as he really doesn't have that high HP. With big baddie paralysed, Tale and Sorophyx, the only remaining members of the Obsidianites, have one last chance to win this battle. Sorophyx's best chance is with +2 arrows, which hit regularly; for Tale, it's a smattering of magic missiles and Ring of Energy, all of which sometimes do damage and sometimes not.

In any case, we get through it alright. Now, though a little cheesy, we decide to exit, rest up, and come back. Aec'Letec is not to be taken lightly. The grand cultist has the fearsome, terrifying name of Tracea Carol. Seriously, that's like a piano teacher's name. You might as well have called her Sheila. And so comes forth Aec'Letec, the proud sole owner of the demon sprite in BG1. As you can see he immediately opens with some sort of special ability that silences several characters, and paralyses Sorophyx. Thankfully, Sorophyx is invisible so should not be targeted for a while. The Wand of Monster Summoning is an absolute necessity here to try and keep Aec'Letec distracted. The danger in Aec'Letec is not so much that he has a lot of health, or that he does a lot of damage. Neither is really true. The problem is he has some sort of crazy paralysis ability, and if you kill him without killing all the cultists standing round dumbly, they explode into a reincarnation of Aec'Letec. So as you can see, we're trying to keep the monsters on him while we take out the cultists. However, there is another thing; notice the white ghost-like icon on TrueNeutral and Nepenthe's portraits. I still don't understand how it works, but sometimes paralysed characters can be hit with a Doom-like ability; it's impossible to remove; and thus, in several turns... ...the afflicted explodes into Ghast form, permanently removing them from the party. We never knew ya, Nep.

15. Aec'Letec The Obsidianites buff up and quaff down for the greatest challenge of the entire campaign: Aec'Letec the demon/devil/whateverthing. Without mods, few encounters in the BG Trilogy offer greater challenges for character level - with, of course, obvious exceptions like the Twisted Rune. (We'll get there, someday. Maybe.) The cult's colour of choice is orange. Clearly, they couldn't afford a coordinator. We are well prepared for this opener. As the invisible Sorophyx moves towards the archer in the back, a combination of flame strike and arrows down the wizard. Sorophyx' backstab doesn't quite take out the archer, however... And the cult assassin responds with a stab of his own, nearly one-shotting Gorth. We pull Gorth out of the front lines, and Tale follows up his Greater Malison with Emotion. It gets several of the enemies, but the assassin remains standing and manages to take out TrueNeutral. (Seriously. No armour.) TrueNeutral: I thought you were going to fix my shapeshifting abilities! Sorry, I was eating French food in New York. I'm sure you understand.

I got through at least three dozen characters and actually had several builds that were cruising through Levels 8-9, but then killed myself through lack of caution. Is there a big baddie at the end?

Old mechanics become unpopular for a reason, yes. And they also come back for a reason. Those reasons are very complex and have nothing to do with any sort of evolution. Which, of course, is exactly what you mean when you say 'update & keep the best part of'. The games industry took some clear forks in the road over its history - at the 1983 Atari crash, the mid-90s 'multimedia' boom, the 3DO/Playstation fork, etc., etc. Every time game design ends up 'evolving' in a particular direction. What's happening in the current years it that we're potentially getting the chance to explore a greater variety of directions, and this Kickstarter stuff is a part of that.

I've read most of it now on the bus to/fro NYC, and it's worth it if you're similarly looking for a light read. Some of the entrepreneurs aren't as interesting, but it has Tim Cain, Feargus, Bushnell, Trip Hawkins and one of the Ensemble cofounders, which hits most of the right buttons for me. It perpetuates some of the myths about the industry and contradicts others (though I guess I'm not in a position to say which myths are actually true, as well). I do find it interesting that these guys are mostly people who wanted to succeed at entrepreneurship and making money / a company / a mark on the world / etc, so we get narratives divested of the lot of 'creative vision' stuff. Exception is the Oddworld guy who's pretty interesting all round.

TrueNeutral tries a wand, but predictably, it does little damage. We are doing OK, but with party members having to retreat periodically to avoid death. Eventually, Tale lands a wand of paralysis, and the last werewolf falls with no real threat to the party. I have to say that I was surprised how well the werewolf island went. Without all of the SCS upgrades, and with the new party members having levelled up to a decent amount, the sheer quality of our loot and wand-investment carried us through. Apologies for the lack of banter/description, but those take the longest, and I wanted to keep updates going. But next update will see us take on the granddaddy of Tales of the Sword Coast, Aec'Letec, and yes, there will be permanent deaths. In fact, I am currently in a rather odd situation, and will need some suggestions on what to do next - but that will become clear in the next update. Which I shall endeavour to do after my 2-day trip to NYC...

His plan was to send us so that his wife, Kaishas Gan, might use us to return the entire people to the Sword Coast. In other words, we were just glorified sea-chart delivery boys. In past games, I've found this battle extremely difficult. With Sword Coast Strategems' upgrades, Mendas/Selaad is immune to most weapons found in the game, regenerates at something like 3-4HP per turn, and just keeps on hitting. I've had games in the past where I was only damaging him as fast as he was regenerating. We dispatch his bodyguard first.

Finding a hidden tunnel complex in one of the homes, we finally arrive at the one and only serviceable ship in the entire island, one which the werewolf-villagers had been preparing in secret. Only the mother werewolf remains between us and freedom. Mother werewolf steps on some traps... ...then gets chunked. For 463XP? You've got to be kidding me. The journey back. Just when you thought it was all over, it turns out Mendas the scholar was also part of the whole scheme the entire time. (Quelle surprise.)

. Luckily, the wand of paralysis once again comes to the rescue; it gets the big LG in one try. Tale, TrueNeutral and Nepenthe help by pretending to kill the big baddie. The final blow comes in the form of a Wand of Frost. Sorophyx: Truly, there is nothing that money cannot defeat. We trot back to the village to tell them the good news. And of course, we are totally surprised to find out that the innocent villagers too are lycanthropes, and we have been infected with the disease during our battles. More choice & consequences: if you tell them you DO want to stay lycanthropes, they still get mad and you have to kill them all anyway. I guess a werewolf on the throne of murder wasn't quite plausible. The domesticated village werewolves pose no challenge. Tale nearly gets himself one-shotted, but the wand of paralysis does its job again.

And at last, the final floor with Karoug, some form of head honcho. I sent Sorophyx up invisible to scout, but the dialogue trigger fires anyway. Luckily, this doesn't break our cover, even though they just had a conversation with us. Sorophyx: Remember, talking is a free action! Daese, the mage, has some nasty spells, so she's our first target. The backstab doesn't take her out completely.. ...but the rest of the gang pop up at the same time, and TrueNeutral blasts a wand of the heavens in her face, while Tale conjures up some monsters to keep the werewolves at bay. Yes, it's all a bit like a Harry Potter movie. But the biggest problem is Karoug, who has transformed into the Loup Garou form. I think they're immune to something like all but +2 weapons, which rules out half the party, and is a lot more powerful. We never picked up +1/+3 Bastard Sword vs. Lycanthropes for some reason, either. Sorophyx quickly nips over and loots the table for the Sword of Balduran. Walsingham: You'd think he'd have destroyed the sword, or something. Gorth: You haven't been on a lot of adventures, have you?

But we do fine. Level 2 brings us face to face with some werewolves. Tale takes one swipe to the face and decides to spend the rest of the battle in a corner. Werewolves deal a lot of damage, have a lot of health, and regenerate. The only real answer here is to pound on them one by one faster than they do us. But remember how we spent the entire fortune of Durlag's Tower on wands? Tale can now proceed to paralyze wolves to lessen the threat. They actually have good saves and magic resistance, but it does tend to work every two or three tries. Merry Christmas. Floor three is the same. For the sake of minimizing cheese, I'm not resting through these floors (which would require us to exit the ship); I think at this point we've already guzzled a dozen health potions.

Nevertheless, the werewolves prove surprisingly easy to dispatch. Walsingham and Nepenthe tank pretty well, well enough to make up for Oner, and in general everyone is able to pull their weight, to my surprise. The only real survivor we find is Dradeel, a mage on Balduran's ship who has gone somewhat mad. Mass Effect 3 ain't got nothing on this cinematic beauty. And now we come to the most challenging part of the island; Balduran's own shipwreck, made up of 4 levels full of monsters. First, a collection of wolves including vampiric. The cluttered environment makes tactical navigation difficult.

14. We Defeat Our Enemies With The Power of Capitalism Last we left the Obsidianites, they were washed up ashore on Balduran's Island. We speak to the little girl near the shipwreck, and learn that speaking in mean ways might make people not like us. This means that we would have to actually speak to people a second time, and act nicer in order to make them forgive us and provide necessary information. Yep, this isn't a game for casual gamers. The village is small and rustic, and everyone talks funny. The headswoman informs us that they were descended from Balduran's shipmates. The werewolf island probably has the worst writing in all of BG1. The 'foreshadowing' is awful, and the faux-rustic speak is about as effective as Hagrid in Harry Potter. (Wait, I guess... that's pretty effective.) That's a pity, because the setting and backstory itself is still very interesting - Balduran's travels, his mysterious end, and now, of course, signs which suggest some form of lycanthropy has infected the survivors. One might even speculate that most/all of the lycanthropes we now find are descended from Balduran's crew, and some have simply lost their 'humanity' faster than others. In any case, we march beyond the walls of the village to defeat the nasty wolves and progress the plot. This area is beset with some 'traps' for unwary adventurers. Which makes little sense, as we're the only potential targets of such traps in a century or more, but ah well. They attack us either way. The human one-shots half of TrueNeutral's health, who proceeds to run away and hide in a bush.

Interesting. Purchase'd.

Why do you think people play computer games? I tend to think that for people who don't play very regularly or feel a strong sense of attachment, it really is a form of relaxation; for people who do, it's the same as most other forms of art and media post-1890s; there is a whole world of institutions, knowledge, competition, friends, language, etc. that makes video games a world of its own with its own systems of rewards, satisfactions and desires. What can you learn by playing computer games? Potentially: critical thinking, knowledge of history and culture, ability to memorise, synthesise information and develop intelligent hypotheses, quantitative / arithmetic skills, spatial reasoning and navigation, appreciation of various types of art styles and music, knowledge of computers, computer software and popular media, socialisation and new social networks, etc. But really what you get out of games depends a lot on (1) what range of games you play, and (2) the 'culture' of your playing - who do you play with, how do you play (very focused, on and off, ultracompetitive or idle roaming, etc). Why make computer games? Are you asking us to speculate why we would, or why we think professionals do, or why society should? The question might be a little clearer. I'll guess and say that for actual game developers it's both a strong investment in that world (see answer to Q1) and a sense of professional work.

You can currently run FO1/2 on Android and ipad/phones, I think with dosbox or something similar.

Apologies. What I mean is that the command does nothing at all. Thus TrueNeutral is currently just a priest that can't wear any armour.

Two interesting things now I'm back playing the save. (1) The newer members are Level 5, not 3. Still long way to go but that does mean they can actually contribute to the battles, making the island a doable challenge. (2) TrueNeutral's shapeshifter abilities are broken. I'm not sure what that means for the long-term survivability of the character.

11/12 is the best looking shirt in some time, I think. My RVP is pretty good. I'd get Rosicky, but I have bad memories of players that I love but know may not be long at the club... still have the 05/06 Pires.