the_dog_days

I bought the entire season over the summer in a bundle. After finishing the first one I went back and looked at my receipt and saw I paid $1.50 for #1. I think #2 was $2.50. Anyway, it was a great deal.

I never had any problems with the swamp. When I got tired of the respawning drowners I would just turn tail and run. They usually stopped following me after a while.

Regarding combat: it's definitely different. There are no real dodge or parry (actual, you push a button and it happens) mechanics that I ever found. The first half of the game was a cake walk, but in the second half I had to abuse Quen to survive. Alchemy and crafting very important to any of the Witcher games. In terms of lore, there's one important thing to remember: you play as Geralt of Rivia, but you do not get to define Geralt as he is part of a preexisting intellectual property; and because Geralt is a lowly witcher, he does not get to define the world he lives in. This means that you can't be the Dragonborn , you aren't anointed the Hero of Ferelden at the end game. Just like you or I, Geralt's influence in the world only extends as far as his influence on friends and family. This puts some players off because they expect the BioWare/Bethesda style "this world exists solely for my enjoyment, I am master of all" plot progression. But Geralt is a witcher; a professional monster slayer, sure, but a broke and weary monster slayer whom most people hold in disdain.

^ That guy must've had some honey packets in his pocket.

So I thought I'd stand up to guardsmen after they unjustly tried to apprehend me for stealing. I held my own for ten glorious seconds before they beat me up and took all my money. See here the violence inherent in the system!

This is the entire issue that I have with the Chris Avellone characters, unlike the other companions that you can leave back at the inn if you want without losing anything, Avellone's require you to keep the companion in your party to finish their quest. Anyway, rant over. The trigger for Durance, the priest, is resting X-number of times with him in your party. I believe you can't remove him from your party or it auto resets the rest counter, and you can't rest repeatedly in the same spot over and over again and trigger the next part of the quest.

So far I feel like Witcher 3 nailed the balance. There is enough random poop for you to distract yourself when you don't feel like progressing the story, but when you do, its executed brilliantly. I agree. When a game gets it right, choice and consequence style narratives are my favorite, the problem is that most of those types of games, IMO, don't get it right.

@Fenixp: Betrayal at Kondor is a kind accidentally mashup of open sandbox and a novel. Aside from stock questions to NPCs, the players aren't in the driver's seat, narrative speaking, which is why the story works. There are plenty of games that go out of their way to give the illusion of choice when in fact all roads lead to the same ending. In such games the logic and narrative progression fail because at the end (when immersion and emotional payoff are paramount) the illusion falls away and you see the game for what it really is. Betrayal at Korndor, on the other hand, tells one story and one story only, but what a good story it is. I wish there were more games like BAK that did away with the spray painted aluminum of 'choice and consequence' that really isn't a choice and is entirely without consequence, in favor of a single story that is well written and narratively coherent.

I saw the bugged out face, but when I zoomed in the first thing I noticed was the logo on the laptop.

The symbol on that laptop, is she casting Aard? with a laptop?! I smell a Lara Croft/Geralt of Rivia crossover. Maybe Ciri could teach Lara how to get in those tombs faster, and Lara can let Ciri borrow a tank top.

If that quote was from MCA I'd really want to see MCA's porn collection. You say that like you don't want to now. I don't know, man, people have different tastes. Ya don't know what you might blunder into. >_>

Did some tests last night, and my rig has small areas down to 4 second load screens on ultra settings without me tampering, but closer to 15 seconds in Defiance Bay. What I've found to be a bigger detraction is the number of loading screens and not the length of them. DA:I, for example, has horribly long load times, but there are fewer of them so I've seen less talk about it.

I'm running it on a new Alienware laptop, and I get between ten and twenty seconds depending on how big the map I'm heading into is and how many NPCs are running around in it. When I was playing on my old machine it would always take about 40 seconds. I also have the IE mod and suspect that turning the auto save feature off would shave about 2-8 seconds.

Sweet, because being a Death Monk sounds like too much fun.

I see a lot of suggestions for moon and fire godlikes as monks, but is there any particular reason why no uses death godlikes? DGs would be better for DPS, right? I'm asking because this is exactly what I'm planning to do with my next play through. Thanks in advance for any advice you might have.

I stopped reading that article we the writer said that he thought Evolve was a great game. He may have had a real point later in the article, but that statement made me involuntarily roll my eyes so hard, I'm now too dizzy to finish it.

Level progression has always been notoriously bad in JRPGs.

Loved his work in Origins, but sadly BioWare jumped the shark years ago.

Replaying the Witcher 1. I downloaded two mods for it, the Book of Knowledge (which has Vesemir give you three books with all the monster and plant codexs and all potion formulas; no more pesky books and scrolls for me!), and the Rise of the White Wolf mod that adds textures and completely changes the GUI into something sleeker and similar to the Witcher 3. So far I've been having a blast. The new GUI looks great and they gave Triss' outfit an actual neckline. XD

I Kickstarted the game way back when. I'm kinda anxious to know if it will be as good as the devs were going for. Wasteland 2, while a decent game, was a bit of disappointment for me. I hope InXile does better with Torment.

In terms of taking damage, Paladins are the best pure tanks in the game. The problem is that the devs basically removed pure tank builds. Also, I love playing as a rogue but they are not the best class for the PC; they are severely limited in combat situation as they are so squishy especially if you're planning to duel wield (as it sounds like you're planning).

Would reducing the number of encounters make the Super Murderer (or whatever its called) achievement impossible to get anymore?

Melee? Demon hunter?! No magically reloading duel crossbows? That hollow vacuum in the center of reality is where the old demon hunters used to be.

I've been playing it too. Never played the console version, so I'm running this one blind. Decided to play a strider and kept two mages in my party for awhile before I realized I need two warriors and only one mage to be optimal. Now I can actually take on bandits without having to bailout half way through a fight because of the stupid single save file. (I know why the developers implemented that, but the pawn system in an open world RPG, reducing the number of save files to one was a mess of an idea.)