alanschu

15-20 years ago I was super conservative and even advocated that Canada consider privatizing health care. Although most of my research at the time didn't do a good job of supporting me (to the point that I reconsidered my position). Basically I realized that a lot of my applications of free market economics still relied on a lot of the idealized application covered in course work. Assumptions such as perfect markets, no transition time/costs, perfectly rational actors, and perfect competition. As a result, even at some of my most ardent big-C Conservative days, I still felt that health care and primary K-12 education were good things to support similar to roads/infrastructure, emergency services, and so forth. Essentially I felt an educated and healthy populace was a good investment and would be good for the economy. Evidently Obsidian just needs to release games more frequently to keep me coming back <.<

Watching my MIL in Texas stay in a job with an abusive boss because she depended on the health care that the job provided in order to get necessary medication was one of those eye opening moment for me. She was eventually fired which was disruptive in ways I'm pretty unfamiliar with as a Canadian, because in effect it also forced my FIL to quit his job so that he could find one that provided adequate medical insurance. For a state that very loudly proclaims their support for liberty/freedom, it seemed like quite the juxtaposition for me. My wife is much more left than her conservative parents (as am I), but even as a son of a business owner in Canada there's a significant "freeing" aspect of having socialized health care. It's one less mechanism compelling people to remain in jobs that may actually be harmful to someone, and one less cost and headache for a business owner (particularly a smaller one) to not have to worry about providing that level of care for your employees.

Also liked it as we had player options in response that allowed us to share that we too were ace!

It's near the office where you can go to Chairman Rockwell's office. Facing the door to that, it's to the right. IIRC, on the map it is just north.

Definitely on the radar. Basically flipped a coin between it and Outer Worlds. Just finished up OW though!

I ran into the Parvati bug as well, though I was still able to continue with her quest. I found hers super adorable and in general she was a delightful character. I agree about Ellie's. Nyoka and Max's were quality.

Yeah I actually really enjoyed the skill level ups. The low level, baseline stuff would all go up but the specialization and harder checks required you to then focus those skills.

I recall having a "Parvati falls to hear death shortly after leaving the ship" moment too, though I'm pretty sure mine happened on Phineas' asteroid. Just finished the game and got "Parvati did not survive." I have similar issue with her personal quest being listed as failed. Similar to @lv100shuckle I was still able to complete the date. I actually had completely missed the quest being botched.

This is my take on it. Make it convenient and at a cost that people are okay with, and the transition will happen. Not too dissimilar to things like digital distribution platforms. Could probably argue it's just the next step? Heck steam was effective for combating some of the casual piracy among some of my friends because it was a bit more hassle free to just download and run a game on Steam than to go ISO hunting. I couldn't say how close we are. There's likely a need for pretty intense bandwidth infrastructure (or improvements in compression and delivery) that need to be done though. That said, if it's *just* about sending an image on your screen... it might be mitigated somewhat. But for that to be the case we'd need spectacular latency to mitigate input lag and so forth. I'm not sure it'll happen "soon" (in whatever ambiguity "soon" means though).

GoA, here's a screencap from the challenges as an example of crafting recipe progression.

Re: Story A lot of the early going is just about "surviving as a freelancer after the events of the prologue" Have you reunited yet with Haluk or anything like that (it sounds like you have - but that's where I just got and it feels to me like the main crit path is starting to come into focus - it's possible you just don't like it which is fair too!). The story aspect is different compared to our other games by design as it is a different type of game (we tried to be reasonably open about this, and it's a big reason why we wanted to have a prerelease demo for people to play - I don't want someone to pick up the game if they're looking for a DA or ME type of experience). I'm not sure I grok what you mean by loot is terrible, beyond feeling that the weapon models are too similar. Are you feeling you're not getting decent loot upgrades? Or that they're not interesting? Or that you're not able to do sufficient damage? Loot progression has seemed reasonable enough by my take, but I'm still pretty early in the game (level 11 IIRC). I tend to get a handful of greens every mission though and I don't feel like I'm struggling to get through missions either, so it doesn't feel like loot "sucks" in the sense that I'm not able to be effective in combat, but you're mileage may vary. There's issues with the inscriptions being sometimes oddly matched (all energy gun gets bonus to physical damage) though that was addressed in a patch today. But I'm also early enough that I'm not really worrying yet that much as my gear still tends to be pretty temporary. I have found 2 legendary yellows and 1 blue in my past few missions. Stuff you can craft seems to be based on your own level. You can unlock higher tier recipies by using the weapons and getting kills. I can craft green Sledgehammers (a light machine gun that I dig). Getting the next level recipe looks a fair bit trickier as I'll need to kill Elite level baddies with my sledgehammer. Just checking out the Challenges tab in the journal right now. The load screens for Forge (and just in general) are no arguments here. I've read some have had success putting the game on their SSD, though not everyone is able to do that and we should work on improving it for everyone (I still use a HDD for most of my games)

I haven't played through the narrative itself yet so I'm not sure how long it is. How long did it take you to get through it all? What other stuff did you find missing from the game (lack of content or otherwise)? (I know end game content has been a complaint as seems to be the case for a lot of these games but curious if there was something else)

ROFLMAO! Only wrong in the sense that it is "older gamers." Compared to fresh young pups that are just getting into gaming the last 5 years the context is probably accurate. Only wrong in the sense that it is "older gamers"? That's like saying "Most green bananas are sweeter than yellow ones" - "Wrong" - "Only wrong if sweetness is concerned". I mean that what they consider "older gamers" had a gap that overlooked an even older group of gamers. Perspective of one's audience can be off due to inaccurate assumptions and all (e.g. I often prescribe a pronoun based on one's avatar) and it's not really nefarious; it's just gaps in their assumptions. Someone that is 28 is an "older gamer" compared to Fortnite players of today. And I pick Fortnite specifically because it's one of the first games I've felt an obvious "generational gap" in that This Thing Is Definitely Not For Me But Is Definitely Very For A Demographic I'm Not A Part Of. My wife and I went to a restaurant and when the server asked us what we were up to, we said we were going to go home and play some games and his eyes lit up "Oh you play Fortnite!?" hahaha. The idea, though, that it was "all down hill" from the EA purchase is going to be something some people will definitely not agree with. And if we were able to take a particularly randomized poll of the entire gaming community for BioWare's peak, I wouldn't at all be surprised if it came after EA's purchase of BioWare. With it comes the PC version of the first game, DAO finally being released, and BioWare's best selling games all coming after that period. Of course it's also a bit of an obvious thought, given that gaming itself has grown. EDIT: Even I did it since I bucketed "Fortnite players of today" as being younger players which certainly isn't an entirely accurate generalization hahaha The way I've always looked at it is that a game dev making games that don't interest me anymore is functionally no different than if they had just gone out of business.

ROFLMAO! Only wrong in the sense that it is "older gamers." Compared to fresh young pups that are just getting into gaming the last 5 years the context is probably accurate. This forum (at least when I was active here) leaned towards even OLDER gamers so for many long time here it was BG2 (and for some, KOTOR) that they felt was our peak. Unsurprisingly those that loved ME Trilogy (or even the first 3 DA games) don't care much for a game like BG2. You probably get KOTOR overlapping the most which would probably make sense given when it was released relative to the others. It's also reflective of what people liked about our games. For example, for a lot of people it was BG1/2's tactical combat aspect was what they loved. Unsurprisingly not much since then has made those people happy. I still had people on the old BSN that said they stuck around being a voice for a return ala "BG3" (or whatever spiritual successor as licensing was probably an issue). For myself it was the narrative and specifically companions which I loved, which I think were more ubiquitous across the breadth of BioWare games (subjective preferences aside). It meant BG1 was cool but not really my cup of tea (especially as someone that hated low level AD&D), though BG2 pulled me in heavily. We also have people that literally didn't play one second of single player of ME3, but hundreds of hours of the multiplayer.

I feel compelled to post: I like Fight On from FF7 (I think mostly due to nostalgia now, but it just fit so well with the boss fights). This track is probably a key cog for the scene that converted me back to a PC gamer back in 1999. I think Bloodlines had some catchy ones that seemed to fit the scene so well. There's something about that has some tracks that I for no particular reason! And while many may feel it reminds them too much of something they didn't enjoy, is a great piece IMO. Came across this and it's interesting how much of this is still true to me today :D Also Arkham Bridge B-)