Fenixp

If you're playing the remastered version as opposed to Classic, you only need to right click into open space to open the movement interface as opposed to pressing 'M'. Also, once you start noticing the vertical 'lines' which indicate depth in sensors display, gauging it becomes very intuitive (if you need to send ships somewhere in the z direction, make sure to do it trough sensor display - it's much easier) You just need to make sure camera is panned at about 45 degrees towards all 3 axes so that you can accurately see all three dimensions. As I said, it takes practice - but I've not seen a more intuitive and precise way to control space ships in 3 dimensions.

It's mostly a matter of getting used to the controls, really. I mean, vertical movement is literally Shift, it's not a huge amount of information to process :-P Still, you'll mostly not use it particularly often - objects in space tend to be conveniently in a similar "depth" and since I learned to scout ahead anyway, I have a tendency of only using the 3 dimensional controls to send out scouts around enemy positions and then use those scouts as an "anchor" for my other forces (when you select units and right-click a friendly unit, all your other units will be sent near it.) Similarly, instead of micromanaging resource controllers, I just tell my harvesters to 'harvest' using the harvest button which'll make them find nearest resource and go grab it and then I tell resource controllers to follow two different harvesters. It's certainly not optimized, but it works well enough and is entirely hassle-free. After some time you learn to appreciate the complexity added by the little shift key, tho. There are several missions with targets that have good coverage on certain sides, but not so great on others - finding and abusing these holes with your annoying little bombers is good fun. Oh and don't worry about harvesters, aside from one mission which tells you they're prioritized, enemies have a tendency of mostly focusing on military units. Still, it's pretty damn hard to beat XCOM: Enemy Within at the best of times. That damn game cost me hundreds of hours of my life...

When I hear "We made our own engine", my first thoughts are no longer "Cool! Pretty!" but rather "Oh man, it'll be buggy and run like crap, won't it?" Still, I'm massively hyped for Dishonored 2.

I name you Commander, son, and you will be a shepherd.

Oh god it really does sound like it'll be open world.

Honestly, I'm not even sure why doesn't Blood and Wine quest write a big message over half of your screen saying "DO NOT PLAY BEFORE FINISHING. WHAT THE HELL, MAN?" So yes, the game does continue.

Finished Blood and Wine, everything there was to do in there. That was ... Wow. An amazing conclusion to the Geralt's story, of both all of his books and games. Words of caution: Make sure to play it with a save where you've already finished the base game. While it can be played before ending W3 main story, it makes absolutely no sense in that situation.

Oh please don't, Obsidian. First of all, writing a game in which you're roleplaying Geralt of Rivia is significantly easier than writing a game in which you're roleplaying whatever the player pleases - I know, it's difficult to see past your, personal roleplaying experience, but I already played trough the game with characters of three significantly different dispositions and I mostly felt I could do whatever I wanted. In fact, it's one of the things I had to praise about Pillars - that it allows you to roleplay what you want, within reason of course. Secondly, achievements are not direct part of the game and are entirely optional for a reason - you may ignore them. If your roleplaying experience goes against what the game rewards you with achievements for, it's your own fault that you can't ignore them, not the game's. Lastly, Witcher 2 and 3 had absolutely rubbish progression mechanics, so we'd be better off if Obsidian didn't look at it too hard :-P

Nah, he's got a point - in a game in which diplomacy is as important as it is in Pillars of Eternity, you should absolutely get an achievement both for killing all dragons and for ... well, not killing any dragons (while at the same time meeting them tho). As it is, achieving latter is actually more difficult than achieving former, even if we only speak of the dragons you may not kill.

Of course there are secret locations, a whole bunch of them. Secret levers, hidden walls and stashes... Do any of your party have mechnics skill to detect traps? Because if yes, you can also detect hidden objects that way. Usually they're just small, hidden stashes, but every now and again you can find secret levers leading to hidden rooms and passages. Additionally, places like Endless Paths contain hidden treasuries which you must unlock by completing simple puzzles.

Well, the most essential skill you're ever going to need developing anything is reading, closely followed by this. I'm not trying to troll you, I'm dead serious. For instance, try "basics of game development" and go from there. If you'd like a more directed experience, in 8 days, a game programming course starts on Coursera. After registering with the site, you can gain free access to all released materials and courses which should get you started, just enroll with the course. (In fact, looking trough the course, majority of presentations are already up in the "Preview course" tab so you can even get started straight away.) There are even various tests and assignments which should help you learn. I didn't do the course myself, but I don't think I've encountered one on Coursera which would be straight bad, hope this is not the first one - and it teaches MonoGame which should be reasonably easy for a beginner.

All right, I didn't really get the complaints about Homeworld Remastered using RNG instead of ballistics simulation previously, but now that it got re-introduced into the game I absolutely do as it does genuinely change the way you play the game. To summarize, RNG means that when one ship's shooting another, whether or not it hits the target is essentially determined by dice roll. Ballistic simulation, however, sees a projectile leaving the nozzle of the ship's weapons and then it becomes a stand-alone object with velocity and direction - then it just sort of hits whatever it connects with. Gearbox spent last few months gutting Homeworld Remastered engine to re-add the latter, especially since it was already present in the original Homeworld. I thought the change is going to look cool, but at the end of the day, won't change much. Boy was I wrong. First of all, when I leave my fighters hanging in space (or ambush opponent's fighters while they're not moving), this means massive losses before the combat even begins. Obviously, hitting stationary targets is far easier than maneuvering ones. Similarly, giving your fighters a predictable trajectory is a death sentence. With RNG combat, sending bombers unescorted meant they'll still do a lot of damage with minor losses - well, since bombing runs put them on predictable trajectories, they get shot down fast unless you make sure opposing fighters have their hands full with your own. With RNG, withdrawing fighters from engagement was non-issue. Since withdrawal also means putting them on somewhat predictable path, you first need to engage enemy using a different group or shield them using a capital ship and only then withdraw. It's kind of amazing - and in spite of not having an intention of finishing it again, I'm now halfway trough Homeworld: Remastered campaign again. TLDR: Bullets are cool.

Only 1/4th of the games you have ever played had a lot of wasted potential? Oh my, you have played a very fine selection of games in your life.

To be fair, there's also an achievement for killing as few opponents as possible (called 'relative pacifism') - and especially in White March, you can avoid a lot of conflict using stealth. It's just a shame the original didn't have more bits like that as well, off the top of my head it was mostly just Raedric's hold.

Actually, most dragon encounters can be talked out of, especially when it comes to higher dragons, in Pillars. In fact, you mostly can avoid fighting many sapient species throughout the game. The way I interpreted the particular encounter you spoke of was that the dragon was mad - that there was no way of talking sense into him, and that he'd attack you regardless.

Dungeon Master. In pen and paper RPGs, there was a player who essentially acted as a storyteller and controlled how the game's going to proceed - since the one doing that was an actual person as opposed to a computer, he could allow players to do anything they wished whenever it made sense in context of roleplaying their characters. My point is that computer is, sadly, limited and you will only ever get presented with choices that writers thought of as opposed to those you'd actually need to roleplay - I'm pretty sure you've hit the same problem with most other RPGs you've played, not just Pillars. I know I have.

Baldur's Gate I and II are by far my least favorite IE games TBH. Started playing the original shortly after finishing Fallout and was massively disappointed with pretty much every single aspect of the game (Why are dialogues so primitive? Why don't I have all that many choices while leveling up? Why does the story and world feel so incredibly generic?) - the only thing I really appreciated about the original was combat, and as far as I'm concerned, Icewind Dale did it better. Then I played Planescape Torment and was absolutely blown away, just to get back into BG2 which just made me think... Meh. Still, if there's one thing I retrospectively really appreciate about the original Baldur's Gate, it's the freedom it gave you. The map was positively massive with tons of content and freedom to go wherever you please. While dialogues are primitive and writing fairly basic, it does allow for a large amount of roleplaying and gives a lot of freedom in what kind of character you wish to play... But eh, then Pillars of Eternity appeared, took what I perceived to be the best aspects of all Infinity Engine games, fixed issues I've had with the combat mechanics and put it all into one tight package. I love PoE.

That's sadly the cost of playing RPG games without a DM - no matter how many options are put into the game, there will always be some characters I roleplay who just don't get what I'd like them to do.

So we found this ancient tablet in wreckage of a ship unearthed somewhere within deserts of Kharak. It depicts the place of our origin. Homeworld. And the wreckage also contained hyperspace drive! Lucky those people still used stone to record their data, innit? All nations of Kharak united in joint project of constructing a large, interstellar space ship. (This is the bit where amazing music starts!) Today is the day of its first launch. Mothership. Beautiful, innit? Time to test basic systems and accompanying craft. Targeting? Check. Harvesting minerals from asteroids? Check. Good, let's test our hyperdrive! All right, we seem to have jumped somewhere AND we did not explode, success! Cool, briefing said we were supposed to meet these guys around here so let's probe the area and... ... uh ... GUYS! GUYS! ARE YOU ALL RIGHT!? I don't think they're all right. *sigh* let's send in a salvage corvette to grab the flight record. Oh, hi! You're somewhat... Yellow. Are you a friend? Are those steel slugs you sling our way a greeting? Do you know it hurts? Pfff, all right, HELLO! ... idiot. Oh there's more of them! ... Well, they're mine now. Cool, we retrieved flight data and a bunch of missile corvettes that attempted to kill us. For no reason! We also killed the rest of them. Nevermind, we need to get back to dock, fit weapon systems on Mothership and do some finishing touches. Let's hyperjump back to Kharak and... Well bollocks. Oh look, there's somebody over there! Guys. Hey, guys. That's the rest of our civilian population in those cryo trays you're shooting at. ... after dealing with *those* impolite bastards, we need to load cryo trays into our Mothership. And then... Indeed. The small fleet and an unfinished Mothership is all we have now. That's all our entire civilization consists of. It's time we used it to do what it was built for, jump trough unexplored reaches of the universe, and reach our Homeworld. And if we get lucky, we might just punish the bastards who attacked Kharak. Or perish during the attempt. What about some foreboding? It's 50% off on GOG and Steam now! *wink wink nudge nudge*

When many fans believed the game was more or less abandoned, Homeworld: Remastered received a massive update. Amongst other things it rebalances the campaigns, enhances UI, adds more depth to formation system to facilitate more advanced tactics, adds full ballistics model to projectiles (in other words, when a ship fires a projectile, it becomes an object with its own mass and velocity which'll fly until it hits something, eh... More or less. Think this dialogue from Mass Effect 2.) and a crapton of other small or large changes and fixes. Remastered edition of one of the best real-time strategy games in history just became even better.

"Let's see, we're carrying 58 axes, 37 swords, 40 halberds, 90 poleaxes, 85 full sets of armor, a small jewelry shop, crafting supplies that would traditionally be carried by an entire caravan and over 60k copper pieces. It's a shame we didn't exchange that copper for higher valued currency, otherwise we could have carried more than 86 copper pieces out of that huge pile of gold. Oh well, it's not like this place is beneath our fotress and we can return at any point or anything, we'd better take what we can carry and leave."

It's prevented so that casting buffs is a weighted decision, not a necessity. Without the limitation, late-game, you'd start majority of encounters by prolonged period of clicking the same buttons and then, in combat, buffs would be rendered largely useless. Right now tho, when you get to combat, you need to make a decision of whether and which buffs you wish to cast or whether you wish to use time of your casters in a different manner. That said, if you give one of your characters equipment which increases their speed in combat, you can send that character ahead, aggro enemies, start combat, buff your other characters and then lure aggroed opponents to your buffed group. I tend to not do it as I see it as cheating the system, but eh, it's a thing you can do.

When it comes to cultural references, I'll just post this video with Hearts of Stone spoilers in it again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHsmiFJqJc It seems large chunks of the game are not only filled with references but even based on them, I'm just far too stupid to notice. Not that I'm complaining. Besides, everybody who's finished HoS positively needs to watch that.

Blood and Wine spoilz (early main quest, with the spoons)