Sven_

Well, it's not gonna release on Xbox One anymore, I think? Speaking of which, for a game that's so close to release... I personally still have no idea what it's actually like. Except that it's gonna be another action RPG power fantasy set in the same universe as that piratey CRPG nobody has ever played. Except me. Btw, if companies can learn something from Larian, it's that they're good salesmen. And I don't mean that in an ironic way. The entire tagline of their campaign was, without spelling it out: "Do whatever silly you like. And share it for all world to see." Be that casting fireballs into goblins with your friends. Stacking crates to get into places we never imagined you to. Or... getting humped by a bear. Which all naturally fit nicely into that whole tabletop/D&D thing. (Anybody simply copying that bear stunt would completely miss the context of it all).

Yeah, but 99.23% of those aren't the ones people get their shiny new PlayStations or GeForces for.

Speaking of which: Avowed has been delayed to February. Now, aside of Avowed, I had to chuckle about the PR reasoning though: It's all done to give players some quality time with their backlogs! So many games coming, after all. Lemme see: Thief. Grim Fandango. Baldur's Gate. Starcraft: Brood War. Myth II. Half-Life. Ocarina Of Time. Final Fantasy VII (PC port). Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus. Unreal. Metal Gear Solid. Tomb Raider 3. Fallout 2. All released with a mere weeks between them. But then neither of those took a lifetime and a team the size of Candlekeep HQ to get off the ground running. One can only drool about how many games there's gonna be in another 25 years. Sometimes you've got to admire Nvidia marketing wizardry though. Able to ship 2,000 bucks GPUs to people who evidently have fewer need for them than any generation of PC master racers before. Selling ice to eskimos has been replaced as the benchmark truly. tldr; thanks to the Woodsie Lord, Shodan and Thy Builder indeed that blockbuster gaming isn't the only noteworthy thing around.

Taffers gonna need some taffin'! I mean, there's references all over the place to everything 0451 anyway. But Chapter 4 in Fallen Aces is basically ripped straight outta Thief. It's not even subtle about it. It hits ya like a, wait for it, blackjack! Then again, WHY THE HELLZ NOT? It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's Thief, not Thi4f. I don't want this to end. But at five Episode 1 levels so far, it's gonna. Even if you're playing this like me rather than if you'd be heading headfirst into M1E1 of your last favourite Boomer Brawler: sneaking around, exploring every airduct and cranny, eavesdropping on all the dialogue, reading all the documents, listening to the radio programme apparently updating alongside to the storyline (and your pursuits) -- and still missing out on some secrets for some reason. I want this poster. Plus the soundtrack on Vinyl.

Oh ****, Fallen Aces is like real good. I think they're kinda "underselling" it with their "FPS Noir" tagline. Everybody thinks "Boomer Shooter", this being published by New Blood Interactive too (of DUSK fame). But in fact, it's oft kinda like Goodfellas Shock. Or Dishonored: The Knife Of Mob City. Sure, you can play it pretty straight forward and just beat the crap out of everyone. But man, these levels. Love them! There's a lot more going on than there ever was in Bioshock. But then, that game didn't even have the most basic of stealth... plus very linear corridor kind of levels... and AI that outside of scripted sequences went AGGRO the moment it sniffed you near. Fallen Aces has you even pickpocketing NPCs/goons. Doors can be locked. Alternatives routes taken. Fingers sticked in the wall socket for a little extra Bzzz (BECUZ WHY NOT). Rats picked up and thrown outta the window. This game is a bloody steal at that price point. Are these dudes communists or what?! I'm already in love with New Blood's latest, the pulp noir immersive sim Fallen Aces, and you can get it for just $10 | PC Gamer If this is the future for this type o' game, I wouldn't complain at all. Also, best voice-acting performance of all time.

I'm generally rarely playing RPGs for companions anymore. Some of them are fun, some are not, but: You can only re-dress the same old corpse so many times. It's still the same corpse. I've already burst into a kind of rant about that here, so.... I mean, even Jagged Alliance has more interesting stuff going on in some ways, like people bonding with others, whilst others would absolutely not be onboard if Y was involved.... then again, that's always been a cross-bred of strategy and RPG (God bless Sir-Tech!) Imagine if at all settling for a character would actually have drawbacks... like a super competent thief. But as soon as you meet him, it'd be clear that he can't keep his hands off shiny things on the possibly worst of occasions. And this not actually "scripted", but goverened by AI. That sort of stuff. BG3 slightly had something like that going on, in particular with Gale. Not gonna spoil that, but that dude has a PROBLEM intially. And that problem wants to be fed. But apparently, they made it very easy during EA to deal with that problem. So it's a minor nuisance at best. Rather than something to actually consider. It seems RPG companions throughout the years have become simply a feature and excuse for player wish fulfillment and entertainment rather than characters. Games making every single one of them bangable only highlight this "evolution". Then again, they ARE called companions, as in followers. You know, like Jesus had them. Or The Beatles. Or that Manson dude. Which seems all rather telling. Kinda like this: "Hey you! I like your pretty face. You come with me. You? You, too. Sorry about you with the hat though. I don't like your big nose, so no thanks. And for the record: I want to get real dirty with YOU over there before you're hitting level 7!" Snooze... Anyhow, it's Friday, 14th of June! I want to do some taffin' and blackjack some goon heads!   Where's my Fallen Ace release, New Blood Interactive?

Well, I guess as to Origins, you could interpret characters bathing in over the top amounts of blood (and body fluid in general) as kind of a comedy rather than any darkness too. Also, Fallen Aces is gonna be 9.99$ at launch on Friday! Are these guys in to get ripped? Indie gaming is shaping up nicely to be the next triple-A fun... now as to immsimish games as well, finally.

Waiting until the finished product with that one. Fallen Aces Full Episode 1 is out on Friday already, though! This may be generally filed under "Boomer Shooter" some. But there was more going on in the fun demo already, and the dev has confirmed the influences anyway... - Fairly open level design, including optionally stealthily routes - Optional stealth that works fairly decent - Quite interactive environments and everything not bolted down being usable as a tool/weapon - In-universe maps, Thief-style, BABY! Whatever the price, this is an offer I'm not going to refuse. Indie gaming is where the new triple-A fun is to be had.

Ah, romance. Romance never changes. I think this is one of the worst legacies Bioware is going to leave behind. Not the romances per se. Rather, that there's an expectation for them to be in every game. Bioware type of companions have become very stale and predictable throughout the years in general. Like: - Meet companion - Sign them up for your party - Gather and venture forth - level them up - unlock their Backstory™, their Companion Quest™ and a Romance™ - level them up some more - shag them! Sure, you can write altogether new and different Backstories™. A decent quest designer is also always gonna come up with an inventive Companion Quest™. And occasionally somebody can actually do a decent Romance™ for once in a video game -- one that doesn't boil down to leveling characters up and getting sex as a reward. But it's still all gonna boil down to the same old beaten formula. What amazing and different characters you could have if their very concept didn't boil down to managing their personal problems, all the while being given the option to get very personal with them. Back then, even Wizardry suggested different kind of character interaction. You could give party members a personality. This they expressed during the course of the campaign via dialogue accordingly. Solasta more recent picked that up again, albeit naturally on a small scale and budget -- Solasta is primarily a D&D combat experience in general, rather than a particularly character driven game. And now with AI entering the fold, this could be taken far further in general. But man, even the original Baldur's Gate suggested something more interesting. There was betrayal. There was personal agenda. Guys and gals who didn't go along with each other even fought and killed themselves! Nowaday's it's all cheap player wish fulfilment: Pick your favourite puppets to go along for the ride. They will do as you please. ---------- tldr; Sorry for the huge rant. But after reading the linked interview above, and considering how cheap romances mostly are, I don't agree with this being a cheap excuse. Building DECENT romances isn't something to tick off a list of features -- the way most games do it. It takes commitment. Unless of course, somebody actually still LIKES this kind of stuff. My condolences. The Outer Worlds also 1 had real problems. A lack of companions to shag wasn't one of them.

How would you pitch it though? With behemoth franchises it's rather straight forward: "Oh, there's a new Star Wars movie / GTA game / Potter book!" All you have to do is getting the word out there. On a smaller scale, this applies to just about every Owlcat game as well: The first ever proper Pathfinder RPG! The first ever proper Rogue Trader RPG! That's the pitch. Apply it, and people will come. The big pitch of PoE was the nostalgia "bait". Currently, SKALD on a smaller more niche scale also does this exceptionally well, I also LOVE this trailer, gets you totally pumped and seals the deal on offer (though calling SKALD mainly nostalgia bait would be underselling it). However, what about Deadfire? Well, it's Pillars Part Deux. It's also larger, more pretty, and all that. And that's it? Assuming marketing was a big factor, Larian more recent did a lot right with BG3 in that regard. Yes, it also was a Dee and Dee game. But they didn't actually pitch their game to the public as a Cee Arr Pee Gee, capital letters. Rather, they marketed this as a game where anything goes -- (including that bear thing). I'm not suggesting every game should be sold on the promise of optionally being humped by a bear, mind. Rather, in a competitive market of choice overload, simply getting the word out there of a bigger, prettier and more refined game may not be enough. There's various sequels that have suffered that way -- in parts, because they couldn't retain the audience of the first game 100% due to lack of exposure or else. In parts, because they didn't offer anything "exciting" for anybody else. Naturally, in a market of choice, product underperforming are always going to be a given.

Pretty much this. My most expensive was the first Voodoo generation MiroHiscore 3D with 6MB rather than the then standard 4MB for over 400 DM,- back then. This was followed by Voodoo 3 (200 bucks upon launch). Even a GeForce 4ti I got for 99 Euros (a year after initial relase, brand new). And until ~ten years ago, only enthusiasts really ever NEEDED to spend significantly more than ~250 bucks in general. There was a WEALTH of viable options even for ~100-150 for many years. So making that jump AND just getting GPUs with 2016 mid-range (RX 480) / minimum requirement amounts of VRAM, I dunno. I'm not gonna run out of games for the forseeable future as such. Plus, I bet even the 2500 Dollars RTX 5090 ain't gonna support CTX (Commodore-Tracing) anyway, so meh. Lovely bunch of pixels brought to you by: SKALD: Against The Black Priory.

When clicking the video above, Youtube greeted me with the ultimate irony: Playing a credit loan kind of ad first. So, basically NextGen advertising: The more you loan, the more you buy. The more you buy, the more you save. Still running my 1050ti. Likely until it's run into the ground. Mind you, it's only in because I don't play much graphical blockbuster kind of games anymore. KCD II may be the first time I genuinelly want to upgrade. Rest of the system is a Zen 2 Ryzen, so a tad fresher and capable of running faster CPUs, including the 5800x3D. 5, 6 years ago you could get a fairly decent RX 580 for like 200 bucks, eventually below. For the same amount of money, you still but get a RX 6600 -- and that's but ~70% faster and still has the same 8GB. Things have really stalled in the entry level in particular. Current gen RTX 4060 / RX 7600 cards still ship with the same 8GB the RX 480 shipped with in 2016 as well. Even for Full-HD, you can't run higher textures anymore in every game. If the likes of 5060 and RX 8600 ship with 8GB still, they can keep those. Before I'm ever going to pay the price of a console just for a GPU, I'm opting out of blockbuster gaming for good. For KCDII though... we'll see.

Sorry, double-post (kinda.) Still yesterday there was a SKALD AMA on Reddit with a few decent info. - Launch successful accross every metric - Postlaunch support will bring a new bard class and improvements - SKALD 2 a developer wish - The engine already supports deeper systemic interactions for more emergent gameplay (as can be seen already in the light sources you can manipulate, e.g. for stealth purpose) ALSO: Love. Love never changes.

Even after four decades, you just can't get it out of yer head. (Later on I had one of those Action Replay cartridges though. Came with a turbo loader as well as simply hitting the C64's F-keys to shortcut the "loading routines".) Oh man, SKALD is actually good. I mean real good. It feels like those oldies but with updates where needed: No bloat, just an intriguing setup and off ya go. It's a narrative heavy game, too, but it doesn't drown you in exposition. I'd rather play focused games like these than a 100 hour campaign full of filler. The character system is complex enough, the battles are about the same. There's even a simple faction system in place. What kills it though is the vibe the guy was going for and manages to hit. Sure, it's pixels. But there's a skill check fairly early on whether your character can withstand the stench of rotting corpses in a cave... succeed, and all is well. Fail, and get a debuff 'til resting. This isn't a "poop your pants" kinda game. It's rather all very oppressive and feels like uncovering dark ancient secrets in the best of ways. There's even dynamic weather (and of course day/night cycles), with the island you visit apparently being fogged permanently. Clearly, the oft expressed notion that horror kinda themes and RPG's inherent level-up kinda power fantasy wouldn't gell is nonsense. Then substantial companies had shown such in the 1980s and 1990s. They just stopped trying it mostly with Bloodlines.

LOAD"*",8,1 SEARCHING FOR * LOADING READY. RUN What actually sealed the deal for me wasn't merely the Ultima/Goldbox aesthetics. But rather: This is a horror-themed RPG, in a sense? When did the last major one come out, really? Bloodlines some five football Eureopean Championships ago? You've gotta be sh*tting me!!!!1 Light sources can be switched out for improved stealth chance (that, is outside of the sun). Combat and character mechanics seem straight-forward enough. But then, a lot of oldies used to be pretty straight forward in that. And I needn't even gather my party before venturing forth.

That's a pretty low bar. I think they can fulfill that. It seems they're chasing another trend though (did they ever do different?): Combat similar to Gods Of War this time 'round. Personally I'm super glad I don't have to rely on Bioware, Bethesda or tiny indies anymore exclusively. Best thing that has happened in the past ten industry years. Well that, and Immersive Sims having another run (though it's come to an end with Deus Ex put on hiatus again, the Thief reboot misfiring from the go -- and Arkane's future in limbo). And now for something completely different: Gonna go watch Furiosa. WHAT A DAY WHAT A LOVELY DAY.

Larian were one time working on one. Beware, a very young Swen Vincke inside. :d The travelling and camping system in both Pathfinder games is clearly inspired by the Realms Of Arkania games (the first two that had a travelling and camping system, that is). Realms Of Arkania = Dark Eye / Das Schwarze Auge.

Well, for all my frustrations, I've put over 80 hours into that WOTR save over the course of over two years (despite never finishing it). And Kingmaker I DID actually finish. In hindsight, that also benefited from a change of pace every once in a while. There's even some easy detective work in that chapter with the plague spreading, and you tasked to get to the source of it. Plus, the nature of the campaign means that enemy variety was a tad higher in Kingmaker. Whereas it is mostly Demons in WOTR (which also means a lot of enemies with higher resistance to spells,.... which has side effects as to combat variety in itself as well. Btw. Unlike any other enemy defensive stats, NONE of the enemy difficulty settings makes this scale. It's the same resistance on lower as well as harder). I mean, Owlcat's basic idea of encounters is mostly stat block vs buffs as is. Gone are the ideas of even ancient Icewind Dale 2 toying with the environment as a factor (barrels, goblin wardrums that when not destroyed would call for reinforcements, ambushes with archers protected /harder to reach because of walls). Owlcat CAN do setpiece (see Oleg's). However, most of the time, they copypaste an enemy stat block, and have you running into that over and over. edit: As to Larian, I've never finished DOS as well for similar reasons. The first map obviously had seen the most luvin' (Early Access). I still fondly remember the encounter with the bomb/s on the graveyard. But: As soon as the second map, you'd run into the same orcs for a while over and over. Their combat system may have been nice. Their encounter system outside a few unique encounters got progressively worse though. Plus, unlike BG3, DOS is a game with a heavy combat focus as well. Every path through every map is gatekept by an enemy. The alternatives to combat aren't there. So the game would rely far more on superior encounter design than BG3.

If Avowed+The Outer Worlds 2 are gonna underperform, MS will delegate Obsidian to do Fallout franchise product for eternity anyway -- and inXile to handle the spinoffs and crossovers. Just think about it: Fallout: Beverly Hills. Fallout: Shanghai. Fallout: Escape From New York. Fallout: Cyrodiil. Fallout: Vault 1. The demand is obviously there, right now more than ever due to the show. But kids that were made when Bethesda gave birth to the the last main game are close to finishing elementary school. And cycles like that aren't going to come down, at least on the blockbusting tier. That is, unless every company expands to have a thousand employees -- Starfield was started in 2015. It's not their, pardon me, vault! Off-topic: I can totally see the attraction of people like Raphael Colantonio (CEO and founder of Arkane Studios) leaving that market and starting anew with a smaller company doing smaller games...

Actually, the latter I've been thinking about almost since starting out. I may even need it for a boss I'm facing atm (hides in the back row, has high resistance against being moved around and lets it rain deadly rubble upon the "heroes"). It's a more obvious thing to do though: There's multiple classes that can mark an enemy -- and multiple classes that can deal extra damage against marked enemies. This screams for a "nuke the **** outta currently marked enemy" type of compositions. Might go with two arbalests ( + 90% of damage against marked enemy), an Occultist for healing stuff (though he's a more prone to RNG in how much he heals than the Vestal) plus a bounty hunter in the frontline. I like this stuff. But then I've played Icewind Dale once exclusively with casters.

It seems I was a little unlucky with my first veteran (lvl3) dungeon. And that right in the first encounter. I've done a few since -- and that was a better ride. Not going too much into Meta / Wiki though initially, as I feel this is a game that is meant to experienced like that. On another note, on a low level dungeon I made an experimental party to send them there: Vestal -- Grave Robber -- Grave Robber -- Grave Robber. The Vestal heals from the backline. The Grave Robber in the front uses "Shadow fade" (invisible, damage buff, 2 places backwards, so ends up being in front of the vestal). From there I'd pickaxe and throwing knife enemies with the stealth/invisible damage buff. Don't think that would be viable at the higher levels. But it was fun whilst it lasted (and last the party did).

Picked up Darkest Dungeon a couple days ago.... Week 25 or something (Dark difficulty setting). Despite getting my ass whopped right in the first combat in my first veteran dungeon (LVL3), I'm kinda addicted. Which is strange, as what I'm doing since is kind of a grind: Leveling all weapons/armor and abilities up to lvl3 as well, all the while upgrading the town. Only then will I reenter another veteran dungeon. The radiant difficulty apparently shortens things without making dungeons/enemies easier, but we'll see. Also, hopefully veteran dungeons and up don't make encounters more frequent. I think it's part of the charm for me that you'll never know whether your next run has plentiful encounters or not. Sometimes, you go a couple corridors / doors without encountering anything, which only adds up to the suspense and decision making process: Should I push on or not? If there's enemies in every corridor and room anyway eventually, that's all moot.

I think that's crazy growth, btw. Even if a good deal of those 500 people are externals. Correct me if I'm wrong. But Owlcat so far had successful games -- including Rogue Trader more recent. But those are still far from the Original Sin 2 scale. Right? Even the likes of CD Projekt only really exploded some after Witcher 3 (250 people working on that, peak). Owlcat meanwhile seem to go "all-in" before a more natural growth would "allow" them to do so. It's fair to assume that one or two of those games aim to be more on the BG3 scale, also in terms of production values. There may be a more action-based game in there as well (similar to inXile with Clockwork Revolution or Obsidian with Avowed). E.g. the days of developing mostly isometric Infinity Engine-likes may be over. Owlcat so far are a good example of picking popular IPs that hadn't been much catered to yet. Proving just as well that it's never a "type of game" or specific set of features making or breaking a game, in particular considering the complexity of their games. But the overall experience pitched. On a grander scale, Larian had done the same with BG3 before. They deliberately didn't sell this as a CRPG. But a (D&D) experience where nothing would be off-limits and anything possible (including having sex with a bear). Owlcat meanwhile are selling the only available bigger Pathfinder Games™ around, and more recent the only beefy Rogue Trader Game™ as well. The flipside of that is having never developed an IP of their own (which they aim to). Who knows, maybe they're in for LOTR next and explode the same way as Larian.

This just in: For anybody hoping that Owlcat would slow down and reverse their "quantity over quality" stance -- well, bad luck. Owlcat may have released three epics (plus DLC) within barely half a decade. Each of those making any BG game look like a dinner snack. But clearly that was not enough. Seems like they aim for the Guinness World records next. company comprises about 500 individuals. they are currently developing 4 games with 4 separate teams. development of two of these games started just recently. games are being created using Unity and Unreal Engine. company's primary focus lies in creating RPGs with rich narratives and complex mechanics. one game being an original IP. next games likely will feature full VO and better cutscenes

Well, it's D&D 5e. Tbf, 2e (BG1+2) wasn't particularly complex either. A lot of level ups boiled down to pushing a button, seeing your THAC0 come down and getting more hitpoints. That said, combat itself in BG3 is on the easier side. In parts because Larian have fiddled with D&D action economy. They've also removed the limit how many magic items a character can attune -- and those are plentiful and have The Power™. Still, in particular early on, combat is oft but one possible way of many. Depending on your character, various hostile NPCs may be neutral just by your pick in character race, etc. And even a low INT barbarian gets the opportunity to just intimidate foes out of engaging in combat every once in a while.