Fenixp

Not a huge fan of cities focusing on quantity over quality (which certainly encapsulates procedurally generated towns in Daggerfall or, sadly, even Tarant - even tho in case of Tarant I think it's more of a case of Troika not having enough time to properly fill it with content more than anything.) Novigrad is a good one, altho when we're talking Witcher 3, I'd say Toussaint instead - it's certainly smaller, but also a lot more interesting to explore - bonus points for the city having a lot of verticality. Then there's Vivec from Morrowind, one of the most visually striking locations in RPG games with a huge boulder looming over it. Dunwall from Dishonored if Dishonored can be considered an RPG, for how eerily familiar it feels. Anor Londo from Dark Souls is a city you'll never forget, that's pretty much guaranteed. Actually, Yharnam from Bloodborne is quite worth mentioning as well. Does Citadel from Mass Effect count? Fallen London from Fallen London and Sunless Sea for how utterly fascinating it is, with background that could fill several lore books. Hell's Kitchen from Deus Ex for presenting strangely believable future (with a little detail born from lack of memory, but made frighteningly real later on) Sigil from Planescape Torment goes without saying.

Huh? Oblivion scaled 100%. You could finish the main quest line on like lvl 2 and that's only because lvl 2 was a hard-scripted requirement for a daedric quest you've had to complete in order to progress in main storyline. As opposed to Skyrim, which... Let's just say I dare you to finish a dwemer ruin on lvl 1 :-P Level scaling in Skyrim was still a bit too much to my liking, but there actually were dangerous areas and enemies which outpowered you, something not at all present in Oblivion. It's true that Oblivion had a lot more of Morrowind in it than Skyrim does, definitely. And I also really enjoy character creation and progression, which happens to precisely be why do I enjoy Skyrim a lot more than I did Oblivion. Thing is, I feel like transition from Morrowind to Oblivion dropped everything of substance about Morrowind's mechanics - Bethesda was cutting systems from Morrowind left and right without much thought as to how it'll affect the bigger picture until we were left with skeleton of RPG mechanics that were Oblivion. For Skyrim, somebody actually seems to have sat down and put serious amount of thought into how to make these changes work, which naturally leads to a massively different game, but IMO also massively superior. Of course, this doesn't necessarily have to mean that you'll like the changes - I still however stand by my initial statement that Skyrim quite simply contains a lot more meaningful mechanical complexity which hardly existed in Oblivion (and Morrowind beats both, hands down). It's poorly balanced of course - but balance is not exactly what TES games ever did right, so meh. Anyway, you definitely hit the nail on the head by saying that they're quite simply very different in their mechanics. If you quite simply prefer more traditionally structured RPGs, you'll obviously like Oblivion more than Skyrim.

Skyrim actually still has an NPC disposition system, it just works differently and isn't visible. IIRC it's changed by your character's actions in the world and by completing quests for NPCs, and with it increasing, NPC reactions change, prices are changed and if they like you enough, you can start taking things from NPC houses - I think this is worked out based on their value or such. Honestly, this system feels a lot more organic than an arbitrary number displayed next to their heads, it's true that the abstraction of persuasion was removed. Considering attributes got removed, removal of minor/major skills doesn't actually do anything and since attributes were more or less an afterthought in Oblivion already, well... Nothing of value was lost, really. What Skyrim gained by this change however is a much more organic leveling process - your character is defined by your actions a lot more than by answers you give at the start of the game, and due to the perk system, your character also ends up much more tightly profiled than in older Elder Scrolls games. I agree that perks themselves were mostly not that interesting, but it doesn't change the fact that investing gained perks makes your character a lot less likely to master ALL THE SKILLS like he could in the previous games. As for standing stones, the change is mostly cosmetic, really - if you have a character build that you want to pursue, you'll stick to a single sign anyway. Dunno about magic, I quite liked how the system worked since some interesting spell effects were finally introduced and as a pure mage/battlemage I never really felt underpowerd, but to each his own I suppose. Wouldn't exactly call that "removal", just a "change".

I would argue that while this is certainly true for transition between Morrowind to Oblivion, it doesn't apply to Oblivion -> Skyrim, which is what made me hopeful for Fallout 4 in the first place. Pretty much the only thing that Skyrim simplified was removal of attributes, but those were made rather irrelevant in Oblivion already so no loss there. On the other hand, it got rid of hard level scaling and made the are scaling mechanics a lot smarter, you have to commit while leveling a character due to perk system, the world was finally completely hand-made again as opposed to being filled with generated content, I could go on. Simply put, Skyrim is significantly more complex than Oblivion ever was - and while it can't live up to Morrowind in mechanical complexity, it removed a lot of Morrowind's jank. I wouldn't even go into transition from Morrowind to Daggerfall as TES III upwards are essentially entirely different games from TES I and II. But then Fallout 4 was actually released and turned out to be a STALKER wannabe without the skill required on the side of developer to actually make that work.

Oh it's not only good thanks to modders, its popularity on consoles attests to that at least. But you can adjust it to your liking using mods, and to create a game which is modifiable to such an extent while also creating modding tools which allow easy access to creation of such adjustments, that's also an accomplishment developers had to work on you know. There's a reason why vast majority of games ever released don't come even close to the moddability of Bethesda's open world games.

Yup, Fallout 4 was a terrible larping-aid, and since that's sort of what Bethesda excels at creating, well... There we have it. And sadly I have to eat my words - before F4 release, I kept saying that "Bethesda surely understands what makes their games tick and would never take away substantial features such as blank slate character."

There will come time when some people will see the dated versions of these topics with rose-tinted glasses and think "Darn, that version of RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS from 30th August of 2016 was so good. Not like this newfangled, boring version from 23rd January of 2018." Truth of the matter is, roster updates are necessary and higher dates behind names of things always mean that the thing is better than the one with the lower date. One of these days, the topics will become red (because, as we all surely know, red goes fasta!) and this'll bring them to perfection. Now if you don't mind staying with me for a little bit longer, I'd like to offer you BETTER RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS. This DLC is an addition to the 27th October version of RANDOM VIDEO GAME NEWS and adds such revolutionary features as RSS feed for mere $5.99. You may also purchase "Non-irritation package" for $20 which removes presence of any members you might choose from the topic. And for mere $60, you may get a season pass which'll contain these two pieces of DLC and any future content! DLC from 30th August version doesn't work for 23rd January version. As a member of Obsidian community, you're granted 30 days of no money back guarantee. Any further DLC may or may not be released. .... Anyway, isn't it about time to reboot the screenshots thread too?

Yup, now I'm definitely giving my Dishonored 2 money to Obsidian instead. I'm still not sure about a lot of design decisions for Tyranny, but it's Obsidian RPG after all.

Not weird per se, tell reviewers to talk positively about your game unless they won't receive it and many will make that behavior into a story. Tell so-called "Influencers" "Oh hey, do you want exclusive Youtube/Twitch views on this cool new game? Well promise us you'll praise it in your content in this agreement here and you can have it!" Not saying Betheda's doing this, but it feels fishy that only some select people receive a copy. There's games by Bethesda and then there's games published by Bethesda. Anything created by Bethesda is invariably buggy piece of crap on release. Anything published by Bethesda, on the other hand, is well polished, optimized and functions extremely well (perhaps with the exception of Evil Within, altho I think that was fine too?)You have your Dishonored, Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Old Blood, 2016 version of DOOM. That makes their decision even more puzzling to me, it seems that their QA department actually does really good job for games they publish (and completely ignores those they develop for whatever reason.)

All right, after some time keeping it in hiatus, I think I gave up on Cities: Skylines. I might try it again with some advanced traffic mod, but... Well, it's true that you can make functional cities without traffic problems with planning and skill. But I found that much more than city layout or citizen happiness, I'm only ever pondering how to make the bloody traffic work as that's the only real challenge Cities: Skylines can offer - and it's not a very satisfying challenge once you realize you're no longer building a city but instead are working on a road network. Anyway, I'll wait for the last piece of DLC, install a mod improving traffic AI and give it another shot one of these days.

Oh I have no problem rewarding talent with my hard-earned money, as soon as I actually know that said talent also produced a good product. I also realize that sales within a week or two after launch are about the most important ones for majority of gaming studios, which is why I sometimes do it in the first place, to put money where it's actually deserved. It's then that I get rather angry that decisions of some clueless higher-up negatively influencing their own picture. After all, actual developers, designers and artists (you know, the people who give life to this entire industry) are rarely at fault for dumb decisions like this. Edit: Speaking of... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76tSYX6ZxsA

Town of Salem sounds very... Board/Tabletop game-esque

Yeah, absolutely. Adding encounters that actually contribute to the story would be fantastic, just as adding some minor ones which quite simply offer more ways of resolution. That's how you make the world feel more alieve, not by having random creatures attack travelers on the road.

Do you blame them? I was prepared to pre-order Dishonored 2 to get the 20% discount, but with Bethesda purposefully withholding information, just... Nope. Ain't gonna happen. And I'm not dropping 60 EUR on the game either. So good job, Bethesda.

Sigh What can you do, lack of basic courtesy and of patience to form non-fallacious arguments are the signs of younger generations I suppose.

Comparison to Morrowind I'd understand in your crusade against everything you dislike, but Daggerfall, really? That game fed its procedural generator with like 10 buildings that it then kept recycling throughout entire game, not to mention dungeons that all felt the same after you finished each tileset at least once. I mean if navigating places that all essentially look and feel the same is your idea of perfection then absolutely, more power to you, but it's not particularly difficult to understand why would some people prefer hand-created content. Similarly, it's really not difficult to understand why people like games made by Blizzard, that is if you spend more than 10 minutes trying at any rate. I quite dislike their games myself, but majority of competitive players will love them and of course they will - they spend ungodly amounts of resources on polishing and balancing their games to present players with an experience that makes them a pure challenge of skill in one area or another, which is precisely what a big subset of gamers is looking for. Naturally, actually understanding why something is popular does take effort and some research, far easier to just call everybody disagreeing "obsessed fans" :-P

Oh come on, fair's fair - Blizzard couldn't come up with an idea of their own if their lives depended on it, but they put far more effort into their games than yearly updates that Activision/Ubisoft keeps releasing.

Established IP only implies setting and some mechanics tho, it hardly means you can't be innovative in your gameplay design.

I don't have experience with Steam Link per se, but I did have the configuration of having my laptop hooked to TV and connected to our apartment's LAN network, played via Steam streaming service. Vast majority of games I have tried worked just fine, without any noticeable lag even. I can imagine link'll work even better. If you don't believe me tho, just ask George! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTjY2CyLTV4 And the review is nearly a year old now, so I can imagine quite a few things got updated. The original definitely did not disable achievements for installed mods. Don't worry, soon enough, a mod to enabled achievements with installed mods will come out.

There were people defending Arkham Knight after it released. Just sayin'.

Just get a Steam Link or a longass HDMI cable. Both solve more than just Skyrim Remastered on a couch. Edit: You don't even need Steam Link actually, just have your computer and your laptop (if you have on) on the same local network and use Steam streaming.

To gauge your interest in gaming as opposed to other common hobbies. You can skip questions if you feel offended by having to spend 15 more seconds on a 20 minute long survey.

They will. That's the problem. Edit: I mean, they'll just eat the sofa when hungry, I'm pretty sure they're the hardcorest.

I mostly dislike MP, including co-op often enough, because there's a whole bunch of people who depend on me sitting at a keyboard for x minutes in a row. Like when I'm playing a SP title, I just pause it and bugger off to pee or make a tea, talk to my wife or pet a rat. Playing MP game tho? "No, bladder, we're staying here for the next 15 minutes still." "No, honey, wait until I'm finished with this match and then I can talk to you." "No, rattie, wait until OUCH god damnit here, take a treat and bugger off." I quite enjoy couch MP tho.

Path of Exile, you're welcome. Know what? Yes, that's exactly what I meant.