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Over 800K concurrent players on Steam (just slightly lower than the peak of Hogwarts Legacy, a casual action-RPG with one of the biggest brand names around behind it), high ranks in preorder charts for consoles... It's crazy going back to Matt Barton's interview with Vincke from pre-DOS times on Matt Chat. You'll see a frustrated guy talking about how he was rejected by publishers over and over, been driven to include MOAR action, as that's apparently what audiences want. Everybody told him that's not gonna work. And now he's shown them. Crazy. I'm likely going to stick with this, despite my ancient 1050ti. Got a bit tired with Pathfinder WOTR, as that is basically "Trash Mob Combat-The Game", to a degree even moreso than Kingmaker. Obviously, BG3, offering more options to direct combat (even back in 2020), no-combat solutions and more is going to be a much welcomed change in pace.

After sitting two years on my SSD unfinished, I'd just uninstalled this today to make some place for BG3. The main reason being that I very much agree with the Codex review's assassment. Owlcat are Combat And Trash Mob Central, basically. And WOTR even tops Kingmaker in that regard in quite a few ways -- unlike Kingmaker, it doesn't have that "detective work" bloom chapter freshing things up either. Last year I completed Solasta plus DLC (not smallest of games either) in like two or three weeks. But that game actually knows combat pacing, and has dedicated dungeon areas where you sometimes have but one or two major fights. Whereas Owlcat outside a few select unique encounters has you fighting mobs over and over and over... Both Icewind Dale's have nothing on their design ethos. It's as if an intern is allowed to go over all their maps at the last minute. Like: "Hey guys, I've spotted another couple empty spots on these maps." "So what's your proposed solution to this?" "I'll just paste&copy another couple mobs from the editor. I mean... these mobs are already plentiful, but more is more, right?" "Ok, shoot. Just as long as we deliver on the promise of offering an experience twice as long as BG1+2." It's always a tiring time sink after a while, wearing you down, like "Quantity Over Quality - THe CRPG". And the buffing routines naturally multiply the issue (which in Solasta, based on D&D 5e, naturally are a non-thing). Which is a shame, as else I quite like these things... so with Kingmaker I took one big break. With WOTR.... who knows. I mean, I want to. But, yeah. May depend on BG3, which in EA already had more options to direct combat than anything Owlcat. Plus, depending on the race you picked, otherwise hostile NPCs turned neutral. Unlike DOS, the map also didn't play out like a thinly veiled combat parcours either (with clearly leveled zones), and was actually fairly open to approach from the go. To quote a current player on the final release: "I'm surprised how little combat I faced so far even with a low int Barbarian (through means of intimidation". We'll see.

A glance through Redfall's credits reveals that 70-80% of the Arkane Austin level/OW design team consists of people who've never worked on an Arkane game before. The "fresh blood" were collected from all over the OW games industry, working on games such as Mafia, Saints Row, Watch Dogs, Far Cry, Destiny etc. before. OW lead designer Rachel Adams prior worked on ME Andromeda and (fittingly?) Anthem. There's at least one leading level designer in Kelly Mangerino who prior was but a junior on Mafia 3 and got promoted for this immediately. In some ways, this makes sense, since Arkane have been built from the ground-up as a highly specialized studio -- and cooperative looter shooter open world games wasn't what this specialization was about. The mirror men of Arkane | Polygon However, a bulk of the newbies according to their LinkedI were hired as late as early 2022. There's still veterans in key positions, such as Bare, Huso and Steve Powers, people that go way back all the way to Deus Ex. Still, Prey's system lead Seth Shain is at Bungie. Prey's lead level designer meanwhile at Archetype. Gaming journalists, this would likely make for an interesting post mortem, eventually. And that's even without considering that Arkane founder and Prey director Raf Colantonio has left Arkane alongside a couple of other Arkane guys to form WolfEye (their first game, Weird West, is actually pretty fun). Bets accepted that they will be joined by more Arkane staff for their second game, for which they've signed a deal with an investor and posted job offers. Despite my ancient 1050ti not being up to par, I'd finally just bought an oldschool boxed copy of Deathloop (from Arkane Lyon, with the fabulous Dana Nightingale, once hired from the Thief fan mission community and famous for D2's Clockwork Mansion, still there). That's all you can do as a consumer: Sending the right market signals. Rather than the wrong ones. Because wasting studios like this on projects like Redfall is the blockbusting gaming industry at its most immature -- and similar as if Hollywood were to waste its better talent on the most generic Marvel spin-offs and Assassin's Creed movie tie-ins for life.

There's a few articles on gamedeveloper.com etc. Psychology and Destiny's Loot System (gamedeveloper.com) Certainly more modern games feel different to me like some oldies. In a lot of games I grew up with, loot was simply the stuff whatever enemies / NPCs were carrying, plus maybe a few gold. Years later I got my first modem in 1999ish, but only visited RPG specific sites occasionally too look for news mostly, including the then BIS/Interplay product sites. It was interesting for me to find out much later that, as far back as BG1, IWD et all (even with its deliberately limited inventory+carry weight), players would pick up all they could and sell it, even though that naturally meant travelling to the next shop and back over and over (which was actually perceived as a "game flaw" despite the game clearly not being balanced to require yo to do such -- alongside the lack of supposedly "unique" loot in BG1). I'm sure there is plenty discussions on these boards regarding whether PoE1+2 would have enough of that too. CRPGs might still not be quite like Diablo. But they've taken a lot of cues since, including the fast-paced level ups, oft with 20 levels total (in Deadfire you're barely past tutorial island and have already leveled up a fistful of times). That's not a dig, I like Deadfire. Even if that doesn't come directly from Diablo, Diablo has influenced much since. As arguably did MMOs (cooldown effects, classes all being somewhat "balanced" and "equal" in their options even in party-based games, and so on). If somebody were to play Realms Of Arkania today, that may come as a bit of a shock. It's an entire trilogy of games. But by the end of it, your characters will be no more than level 8-9ish, you may aquire some of the best gear the game has on offer directly upon startup if you have the money as a lot of stuff is simply available from the next vendor -- and it's such a slow-burner compared to modern games in general. (Naturally, things weren't as evolved back then too, so maybe parts of that were a bit of an accident as well). It's probably still telling that the main designer calls BG a "light role-playing game".

One last ado re: BG1 vs BG2 (and player feedback). Had the likes of Ultima 7 ever went through focus group testing or anything like that, it would have never existed. Whereas modern games are carefully tested to have an "addicting" reward loop (at least 20 levels to level up into, plenty loot, every map being a carefully crafted combat parcours to entertain the player), Origin didn't give a ****. As a result, during your first major travel say from the starting town Trinsic to the capital, all you may face in U7 may be a wolf or two. Characters carry on their own "life" rather than being vehicles that give the player his/her next quest. And nobody at Origin thought much about implementing an addicting "loot system" either -- as if picking up stuff were a slot machine to tune. (The game too, actually has crafting -- but in a more natural way, as opposed to a Crafting System, Capital C, Capital S: You can pick up stuff and logically combine it. Actually, NPCs do so to. The city's baker dumps flour on the table, swishes it around, adds water and uses a rolling pin. Voila, a bread is born). In Ultima 7, the world alone was to be plenty enough. U7 is basically a world simulation at least as much as an RPG. That's why games such as U7, despite their clunky combat and dated controls, still stick in the memory to this day. As said, KCD was the last game that reminded me both of BG1 as well as U7 -- even though BG1 never went that far. In the making of video of Kingdom Come Deliverance, the devs actually acknowledged that risk. That for plenty players the idea of traveling "pretty forests" but "nothing happening" for a big chunk of the game's playing time might be deemed "boring". And as we know by now: Much of that in BG1 wasn't actually intentional. Beneath a Starless Sky: Pillars of Eternity and the Infinity Engine Era of RPGs | Shacknews Bioware simply didn't have time anymore to cram more stuff onto their maps (or like in Owlcat's case: Place another enemy mob wherever there may still be an empty spot). On topic: Once I'm finished with SOlasta's Lost Valley DLC, I'm finally back to WOTR. I still have at least a Drezen to conquer, btw.

I wish (what a kickass 1990s box art -- just 155 bucks on ebay though).

Speaking trailers, Larian have released a new teaser in time for the upcoming Game Awards. It shows a few familiar faces. Isn't it slightly humorous that a character who originally existed but on Cameron Tofer's pen&papers eventually not merely went to be a popular RPG character. But also got incoroporated into Forgotten Realms loredom? Gotta love 1990s approach to game making/writing. I'd love to see a game based on his adventures in Barovia battling Dracula, er Strahd. Getting a little sick and tired of elves and dwarves tbh. Not because they're elves and dwarves. But even with your favorite meal, if you're getting it served 24/7/365 -- eventually you're going to feel stuffed. Go for the fangs Boo, GO FOR THE FANGS!

The DA:O is so 2000s, it's hilarious. How do you get a (primarily young male) audience to finally care about tactical combat fantasy RPGs? By showing boobs, violence and blood alongside to a randomly licensed Marylin Manson track. It's basically what Tim Schafer had discovered for Full Throttle when he found that placing explosions on the box of his point&click was of benefit for sales in 1995ish. Except taken to a whole different level of cringe. It made for some great mockery too though, admittedly.

It's the new ****.

To be fair, BG2 looks like a case of overreaction straight accross the board. Rather than populating some of that wilderness more, they tossed it out entirelly. Speaking overcorrection, I'm sure that "not enough unique loot and magics" was a fairly vocal leveled criticism towards BG1 also, 1999 or not... 1999 was year 3 after Diablo had hit, after all. The lesson though is: You cannot and will not please everyone. One thing I've always been hesistant about regarding Kickstarter and crowdfunding is thus, and it's true: Players often demand what they THINK they want rather than what they actually want for a host of reasons... One of which being, as a simple excerise: Think of some of your favourite games. I'm sure that a lot of those had features that you either didn't know existed before or didn't think you'd enjoy until you actually played the game... Even the IE games themselves, they iterated a lot, with Torment being the most obvious standout example (a game largely based on character study as opposed to stats crunching and dungeon crawling? WTF.) But far from the only one. Both BGs are very different games, as we'd found out too. If you counted "Throne Of Bhaal" as a thirdish sort of entry into that, that's a hugely different experience from both of them too (never liked it, admittedly). Crowdfunding is nice and has lead to a few neat games that otherwise would have never existed. But occasionally then the problem suddenly ain't the publisher with specific demands, it's the crowd. Thus, even if say legacy heroes such as Jon van Caneghem and D.W. Bradley would join forces to collect money for their new dream project (one CAN dream, can one not?), I'd rather back them based on a hopefully promising general vision, as opposed to a new "Legend of Might & Wizardry" or something. If they'd promised to deliver a game just like in the old days, they're naturally going to be judged by that. Tim Schafer had found this out the harder way also, less so Ron Gilbert when he had actually delivered a pixel style adventure game, verbs included, in Thimbleweed Park. With Schafer everybody was thinking DOTT, Grim Fandango or Full Throttle. What everybody got was something a tad differently.

It's one of the reasons I have played BG1 multiple times, and BG2 once: The entire middle act of BG2 is a linear set of dungeon crawls, aka Icewind Dale:The Underdark anyway (a thing that the original Icewind Dale did better too even without any Underdark, if that makes sense). Plus, BG1 is still a bit like Ultima of old. It's not near as interactive and indepth in terms of simulation (NPC schedules, everything being pickupable and interactive in some way.) The Infinity Engine couldN't do that. But BG1 still simulates the Sword Coast as a place somewhat proper. And like Ultima, traveling from one place to the next, well in Ultima 7 if you're (un)lucky, you may see a wolf or two. It's designed like a place, not as a playground for the player to amass xg and fatloot and never possibly get bored. BG2 meanwhile would demonstrate were Bioware were heading later on: Not simulating worlds, rather D&D theme parks/movie set pieces for all their tightly scripted romances, drama and quests to unfold. No location ever is for you to discover, you hear about it from quest givers (and travel there via a click of the mouse). Every location equally serves a purpose to that quest. Gone are the forests that would exist because they're... forests. Gone too are the huts in that forest that would equally exist, because they're huts in the forest. If there was a hut in BG2, you knew beforehand there was soemthing going to be inside. BG2 unfortunately has influenced much since. It wasn't until Kingdom Come Deliverance came along that an RPGish game reminded me of BG1 again (or in some respect, Ultima, for that matter.) That magic stuff was still rare in BG1 too, similar that it could take you hours to even get gear that doesn't break due to the game's lore actually being incorporated into the gameplay, as opposed to a readme.text or cutscene, contributed equally to making it my favourite of the two to this day. Stuff is so plentiful in BG2, it feels cheap. It's the kind of thing that previously only ever existed in Diablo action RPGs, where the entire core loop is rewarding the player as much as can, so that ideally he doesn't even consider turning the damn computer off to take a break. Like a slot machine where you put the coin into, and eventually you know there's gonna be some reward. The entire thing reminds me of the Realms Of Arkania series, actually. The first two games had a travel system that was quite elaborate and micro-intensive. Characters needed clothes (shoes would go even go bust after a while), food, could get sick so you needed somebody who could cure and find herbs -- and the resting system of assigning jobs to party members was actually a big inspiration for the Expedition series (Vikings et all) and Kingmaker/WOTR alike. Owlcat have publicly stated as much. But as back then there was (expectedly) a vocal portion of the playerbase who deamt it all "boring" and "time-consuming", they took it mostly out for the third game, "Shadows Over Riva". Nowadays the main designer admits it was a mistake. As what they were doing may not have been to everbody's taste -- no surprises, as even the slower paced RPGs at that time were mostly about nonstop questing and combat and no "downtimes" in between. But it was something special that nobody did. And it still influences, unless countless other games released at the same time. Such as Owlcat. Their resting system alongside having a travel is one of the reasons why I picked up Kingmaker back then.

Yeah those games likely don't play very nice anymore, interface and controls included. What I'm missing is that they're offering scenarios that have since almost completely disappeared from RPGs and crawlers. Makes me sad. And it's kinda puzzling as well -- it's not as if horror-themed settings ever have went out of style elsewhere. There's a few Ravenloft user campaigns for NWN 2 though.

Finished with the main campaign of Solasta -- immediately bought the "Lost Valley" campaign DLC. It seems good for another ~30 hours or so of Solasta which is fine with me. Getting into that D&Dish vibe whilst playing, I went through the catalogue of D&D games released so far. Solasta was influenced by SSI's Gold Box games anyway. But one thing I wish was still arround was the kind of thing the Ravenloft games were going for. Hadn't actually played them -- still remember reading a Stone Prophet review in PC gaming mag over and over. But gothic/horror proved to be a decent fit in the Evira games already (though they're arguably more adventure games than RPG). Maybe I'm going to pick them up. All the D&D classics were released on Steam a while ago anyway. Plus they've even seen a QOL update recently.

Actually, at least campaign-wise, that is what I like as well. This goes back to BG2 too, but the rampant rise from poor boy to God-like has grown a little tired. Nowadays everbody is doing it, and BG3 had initially received flame for not going as far (IIRC they decided to make their campaign go a little higher level after that). To be fair, the level progression is just as quick, as the campaign isn't that long. Still, at least in D&D 5e you don't get all that many new abilities from one level to the next. But in PoE, you've barely shipped past Tutorial Island™ and have already leveld up a fistful of times -- new abilites included. It's all fine mimicing P&P-like mechanics. But those pen&paper campaigns can go over weeks, months or even longer. In computer adaptations you're barely getting used to all your new stuff and then it's another level-up. Compared to BG1 (or the Realms Of Arkania trilogy based on The Dark Eye most popular German P&P system), you barely gain a few levels. Actually at the end of the entire RoA trilogy your party is maybe level 7 or 8 (starting out at level 1 in the first game). Sometimes this rampant leveling (combined with lots of magic loot) feels a tad cheap and instant-gratificationish . Like a slot machine where you put in the coin, and soon enough you'lll get another reward. Back in the 1990s, this was the action RPG Diablo kind of gameplay loop. It's influnced many more games since.

Yes, it's not a narrative game, just as EoB. There's no dialogue (options) to speak of too. The game has nice ambience, a great theme music, a premise in the form of a render intro, a pretty cohesive world for a dungeon crawl -- all setting the mood nicely. And then it's largely a Game Of Dungeons. Er, and Puzzles, actually. Real ones, unlike the focus group tested to auto-solve stuff in Skyrim et all. There is a narrative framework, and it works pretty well. Your party in Grimrock 2 is for some yet unknown reason ship-wrecking on an island -- and there's seems a purpose for that which is up to you to discover (a lot is told through documents/letters you find). Also, the atmosphere is excellent throughout with day/night-cycles, good ambience sound (some of those shuffling sounds of creepy crawlies in the dungeons made my skin crawl), and a big variety of different locales (swamps, crypts, forests, overland, castles,..) Here's a bit of early gameplay. Oh, and let me add another bonus point for Solasta. Making the light (you can also cast) influence fights against vampirish characters is just awesome -- e.g. they get -10 hp on each turn if they are in the light. Even though they can be lured out of the dark and into the sun during daytime a bit too easily. Thinking about it, that mechanic could make an awesome vampire / ghoul themed CRPG in an on itself.

Doublepost, because on a different note: I hugely enjoyed playing Grimrock 2 a couple years back (puzzles, combat, atmospherics and all). Hadn't played it in years and re-installed. And was shocked to find that a) the download was but ~800MB and b) the installed game takes but 2 GB. Despite the game's textures still not looking that low-res at all. Nowadays even small indie games oft take 5-10 gigs, that's miracle work to me. Unsure whether there will ever be a Grimrock 3 (there was Druidstone after that, but one of the Fins seems to be working on Alam Wake 2 next). There are a couple similar games coming out in the upcoming months still. Such as Dungeons of the Amber Griffin, Fallen Dungeons and Skull Stone. Plus there seem to be a couple neat games since. Just about ten years ago, I was concerned that the type of RPGish games I enjoyed were all going to go away. And nowadays you have to consider which ones to pick up and which ones to shelf for later joy. (Solasta I only picked up recently also because I wasn't even halfway finished with Pathfinder WOTR -- a bit of Owlcat trash mob fatigue). Good times! In terms of gaming, at least.

Oh, I meant "stripped down D&D 5" as in "stripped down from previous D&D editions (and inherently so, Pathfinder). @Wormerine: That's well put. I think prior the only game that did this somewhat (albeit with a much more busy interface) was Temple Of Elemental Evil. Purely in terms of mechancis and engine, is was ace. Never liked the latter part of its campaign though (endless hordes of bug bears and the like). Plus the combat log was mandatory reading. Also, the main campaign is a fairly affair, but I have visited one location where you had two choices to tackle it (storm the front gates vs. find another way). Plus later on I could try via CHA skill check to persuate the Big Bad to just give me the quest item I was looking for. Didn't expect either. What's even more interesting is that the UI and stuff is also very robust already, and that they even implemented co-op as well as a campaign editor (Neverwinter Nights I hear ye calling). Mind you, these guys aren't industry n00bs. But still.

So, Solasta. Damn this is actually real good. That is if you can accept a game that's narrative-wise is less about having an epic story, and more about providing a bit of context to pretty fun tactical combat. (I was more invested in Icewind Dale's narrative than this, though, tbh, Icewind Dale DOES have a pretty decent story for what is essentially a dungeon crawl). The voiced banter on the occasion can be good for a smile or so every once in a while. It's also cool to play a CRPG for a bit of a change that: - doesn't need you to engage in repetitive buff orgies before like every fight - has fighters being fighters, rather than for the sake of "balance" let them cast non-spells left and right (this is a party game anyway, what does it matter if casters can do more?) - doesn't have epic +1 +2 +3 magic loot like everywhere, something that back for more traditional RPGs seems to have started with BG2 (my party is level 6 and still carrying standard weaponry) - doesn't have an abundance of talens and feats that mostly bog down to like a +5% increase in hit chance anyway (ok, there could be a bit more options, in particular on level-up) Mind you, a lot of this is down to the game simply being based on stripped-down D&D 5e, but the implemantion seems solid, the combat is fun, there's surprised to be had during travels as well, what's not to like? Also, the production values are on the occasion surprisingly solid for a game from a team of 20. If somebody would have shown me this beforehand, I couldn't have told whether this was BG3 or else (but then, according to Vincke, much of the extra budget of BG3 goes straight into cinematics... zzzz).

Noah Caldwell-Gervais? Yeah, he's pretty cool. One channel that should have more subscribers is Matt Chat. I can understand why he doesn't -- he covers a lot of oldschool (RPG) stuff, including in-depth interviews. Plus he's an academic more than an entertainer. There's no fancy editing, no joking, just a cool guy who loves RPGs, a camera and the games and developers. Still, yeah. Oh yeah, it's definitely not a game I'd recommend if you aren't into the mood for it. If you have the time, I'd recommend playing it during the holidays.... you'll understand later why.

It looks pretty bad in the video linked to above -- 23:30 mins onwards. (Mind you, whilst he seems to value the same things I do often, the guy's always fairly critical in general, still a stealth system that is "impossible to fail", even by deliberately attempting to **** up, that'd be pretty off-putting). I mean, the dude's blowing his disguise by shooting people in the face, and all he's ever punished with is the guards begging him to stop doing it over and over? And as he argues, similar to the quest design shown beforehand that scene (follow the arrow, done), it'd be fitting to the whole design principle of the game in general: The game being absolutely terrified of any player failure, his/her own discovery, or anything, rail-roading him/her throughout the story from start to finish. With dialogue checks also being meaningless as they'd be impossible to fail most of the time, perks being simple stat/carry weight boosts (which Obsidian had already corrected in NV vs FO3), ammunition and loot/crap in abundance and more. That's a sentiment (everything being weight- to meaningless) mass-expressed on a big German gaming forum I frequent also. Even if you wouldn't expect a super hardcore RPG experience, that'd be new grounds even for Bethesda.

AFAIR both the dialogue (with Florian) as well as the journal was pretty explicit about this. It's one of the few "critical" decisions/challenges of the game later on as well: You have to make a decision which leads to follow, as going after each takes... time. As such you're not going to see it all. There's a multiple-choice dialogue though usually later on, like: "This will take a bit of time. Are you sure you want to...?" I recently compared Pentiment to Jordan Mechner's "The Last Express". Reason being: They're both narrative/adventure games, have a unique art style, not much in the way of traditional "puzzles", a historical backdrop, murder/mystery -- plus portray a confined space where time passes. In "The Last Express", it's only actually real-time. The game takes place aboard the Orient Express on the verge of WW1. Passengers aboard that train move throughout the train just as the player's character. Naturally, you can miss stuff and make bad decisions. To lessen frustration, they had implemented a feature that actually allows you to rewind time at any one point. The sense of place due to this (the confined space with finite characters, the time passing and the world not standing still just for you) is still pretty unique to this day. It's kind of a PC cult classic. No wonder "The Last Express" hadn't seen much imitators though, as back then it was a colossal flop with a then huge budget behind.

I was intrigued when I read about the whodunnnit DLC. But then I wondered whether that even works, considering that the game railroads you this much. If that plays out as shown in the video, where the "detective work" is basically following a marker, then that's such a waste. Speaking of which, I'll definitely do a 2nd run of Pentiment (have already casually started, but not progressed much into act 1.

I tend to come back to this channel, as usually this guy shares a lot of my tastes and views. But back then, this bit alone was enought so shelf The Outer Worlds for the time being for me. The quest he shows may not be the perfect showcase for the entire game. But it's still pretty damn hollow (21:45 mins ins, if the linking didn't work correctly). Why is this even a "quest" when it literally boils down to following an arrow where to go? Unless it's a tutorial kind of thing, maybe. But even then that's pretty meh. (What follows about the "stealth" "sections is almost worse).

It's the only AAA RPG of the past ~15 years I played and enjoyed without any reservation (well, with the exception of the so-so gunplay). Luckily I've yet to play all the DLC yet, and they're said to be some of the best ever developed. But look what's happened since even with Fallout in isolation. (The devs of these games increasingly develop RPGs for players who aren't actually that into the once core values of the genre in an attempt to ever increase their target audience). Fallout New Vegas should have spawned at least a few AAA games that tried to top it at its own game -- but no. Speaking of which, I've yet to play Outer Worlds too. But what I've seen about it, it seems a stripped down and lesser version of NV (and there's even a quest compass leading you all over the place like witcher sensing breadcrumbs, despite the game not even being open world as such -- bugbear of mine). As there's more choice now than there was when NV came out, I went with different games so far.