lobotomy42

At the beginning of the "Far From Home" quest, the quest-giver explains his plight. If Kana is in your party he interjects with something to the effect of "...to retrieve a medallion to earn the favor of the gods so that you can return home. That reminds me of ... a story I heard somewhere." (paraphrased from memory) This seems to be intended as a fourth-wall breaking moment, relying on the player to get the reference. Unfortunately, I don't get the reference. Is this the plot of a story from Greco-Roman mythology that I can't remember? Maybe something from Tolkien? I'm struggling to think of many contexts where a character is attempting to "earn the favor of the gods." Can someone here explain it to me?

Kind of a shame, if I do say so. Dungeon Siege III looked pretty and played quite smoothly.

Thanks, that description led me to Google this rpgcodex report, confirming: http://www.rpgcodex.net/article.php?id=8973

Back when Dungeon Siege III came out, I remember there a was a big (little) deal about how Obsidian was on a better technological track, since they had their own in-house engine to work with. DS3's comparatively bug-free state was given as evidence of the dividends. Fast forward to today, and Obsidian's big 2D RPG critical success is...Eternity, made with Unity. With expansions and presumably sequels to come all using similar or successor versions of the engine. Just out of curiosity, is Onyx still around? Did South Park use it? I haven't heard Obsidian talk about it in awhile.

Cool, I have my Beta now. It looks nice but it's a bit...empty? There are a lot of grayed-out buttons that seem to say "coming soon!" And some features, like activity tracking, seem totally broken. It was able to automatically detect my previous non-Galaxy downloads, though, which was unexpected and awesome.

I feel bad for them. This feels like a classic case of scope creep. The original pitch was a really basic, flash-esque 2D cartoon RPG thing. Over time, it became a full-fledged 3D adventure/RPG hybrid like a modern Quest for Glory, which is clearly what fans wanted but also COMPLETELY NOT WHAT THEY BUDGETED FOR. I'll still fund them because, I guess, I hate money and I feel bad for the position they're in.

I finally started Pillars of Eternity this week, after a few months of slowly finishing up Shadowrun: Dragonfall. It's quite good!

It's not irrational! I, too, "want all my games in one place." I just want that place to be GOG.

Has anyone gotten their GOG Galaxy invite yet? I requested this morning, but haven't received it. I'm eager to try it, though.

There is nothing redeemable about it. The combat is the worst, bog-standard MMO "repeat all abilities until they die," story and level progression are painfully slow (to extract as much time and money as possible from the player) and the story isn't even there most of the time. The vast majority of the content is generic filler. And yes, it has little to do with Kotor 1 or 2 (and what connections exist are mostly the MMO pooping all over them.) Bioware seems to have confused voice acting with story. "We spent all this money on voice acting!" they announced at release, as if that was somehow indicative of quality. Don't get me wrong: all else being equal, voice acting is usually better than not having it. But at the end of the today, voice acting the line "Please gather these fifteen widgets" does not make gathering fifteen widgets any more exciting. And gathering fifteen items is most of what you do in SWTOR, a design strategy that Dragon Age: Inquisition also adopted, to its detriment.

Well, one team should keep on working on the PoE expansion and possible sequel. But if another team wants to kickstart another series....I know it sounds obvious, but, um, the already have the Pathfinder license... Or are you asking for my fantasy idea? How about a fantasy RPG, but instead of medieval Euro trappings, change the time/place entirely. Like maybe Meso-America? Or maybe a sci-fi setting blended with high fantasy tropes...like, some sort of evil "Lords" that are opposed by an order of "Knights" who have to travel around the galaxy to save a princess?

I think it's mainly that there's so many more games coming out now, that one game's odds of becoming a "classic" that people will be returning to years down the line is much smaller. The bigger of a hit Eternity is today, the more likely it is to be the kind of game that people return to in five or ten years. Still, all things being equal, it's better to be getting a trickle of income from continued sales than not. It will at least ease the pressure a bit, especially if they can crank out a few more titles that are equally well-received.

I haven't honestly played that much yet (because life) but based on what I've played, watched and read: Fewer, more in-depth companions (a la Mask of the Betrayer) Romances (no apologies) A bit more comedy (Obsidian showed they could do this well in Dungeon Siege III and Alpha Protocol) More weird, talky, "misc" bits and slightly less combat Alpha Protocol level "reactivity" (multiple factions, changing final bosses, etc)

Because they are deliberately making a play for the sizable group of gamers, like me, who enjoyed Dragon Age: Origins but felt burned by Dragon Age 2 and, to a lesser extent, Inquisition.

I agree that this seems much more Dragon Age: Origins than Baldur's Gate, but I'm okay with that. Or I would be, if it looked like the tone or story were anything similar to DA:O, which this definitely isn't. It seems like they're sticking with DnD's somewhat light-hearted tone, but probably not matching the humor and charm of BG. And that voice acting was atrocious - they were doing that thing, present in so many RPGs, where the actor clearly hadn't read the dialogue of the character he was responding to, and therefore got the intonation of what he was supposed to be saying completely wrong. And the dialogue itself didn't seem particularly special either. Ugh ugh ugh I had high hopes for this project, but it's moved down my list quite a bit after this.

It is mentioned in the article Infinitron posted. "What the main campaign will be, Tudge isn't saying yet."

Still nothing about the single-player campaign.

The music was excellent.

The vast majority of RPGs are escapist power fantasies - everything is there to stroke the player's ego. Avellone has said as much about designing non-romanceable companion characters, and it holds true for most CnC decision points as well. (YOU, almighty Inquisitor, get to choose the new Pope! And who wins the civil war! And fix Morrigan's relationship with her mother! Yes, you, because you're so great!) It's just the nature of the genre.

"Trainwreck" is putting it a little strongly. There are a bunch of functional pieces in DA:I, they just all seem to be culled from different design documents and seem maybe half-baked. "Designed to maximize bullet-points on the box" seems more accurate. Now, speaking of trainwrecks...

I agree with this. There's also the narrative issue of being given relatively little reason to start an Inquisition and have you lead it. It's all just sort of thrown at you ("Oh hi we're revolting against all aspects of the status quo" "Oh ok cool" "And also you're Jesus and we're putting you in charge" "Sounds good, who am I again?") If this were done in the service of getting things rolling on some awesome storyline that would pay off later, it'd be acceptable. But it just ends up being a pretty standard defeat the Foo Monster story, so it's not clear to me why there was even a need to set up all the Inquisition stuff. The main plot also takes you through a lot of detours with the Civil War / Wardens side-plots that don't seem to tie into anything in a meaningful way. I suppose that's of interest to the uber-fans who read all the books, but it seemed somewhat tertiary here.

So I'm about 80 hours in. Morrigan just showed up. This game is bad, right? Seriously suffering from a disconnect between the long stretches of MMO gameplay interspersed with Bioware choice-and-no-consequence cutscenes. And even the cutscene sections - the thing Bioware is supposed to be good at - are borderline incomprehensible, with characters coming and going and factions appearing and disappearing faster than even Dragon Age 2. This is maybe the last time I get a Bioware game at launch. I've said this before, but I think I've hit the fool-me-thrice, shame-on-me point.

http://www.gamecritics.com/brad-gallaway/dragon-age-inquisition-preview-an-errand-girl-for-the-kingdom More Skyrimization confirmed. *sigh*

sounds just plain wrong. Or does DA:I actually use D&D ruleset? That would be a big surprise for me... /confused I think they just mean generic high fantasy crap.

This is somewhat worrying: http://www.usgamer.net/articles/dragon-age-inquisition-preview