algroth

He's an icon in the gaming industry for certain, what with being the main author behind two games often brought up as the best-written games of all time in Fallout 2 and Planescape: Torment (KOTOR 2 as well, I guess). Then again, so is Josh for that matter.

Replying to the OP's points here... I'll start off by adding a general caveat here to the way the game or its failure to sell is approached: much as Josh mentioned himself, had Deadfire's word of mouth been all in all negative, that could have certainly affected sales at the end of the day - but it wasn't. Most outlets deemed it a better game than its predecessor and by and large the audience reception was very good, if maybe a tad less enthusiastic than the first game. It currently stands at an 88 metacritic score whilst on platforms like Steam or GOG it averages an 84% overall approval or 4.3/5 aggregate rating, so certainly the word of mouth wasn't bad, or bad enough to have pushed players away from purchasing it on a large-enough degree. Whilst I don't pretend to have a definitive answer for Deadfire's dip in sales, I don't think any qualitative assessments are it by any stretch of imagination (though perhaps issues in *style* could have had an effect - more on that later). I somewhat agree with the former, disagree rather strongly with the latter. I generally don't consider "depth" a quantifiable value so I always try to shy away from saying things like "A is deeper than B". I certainly got more out of the first game on a thematic or ideological level, but I also think this is because a) the writing was more on-the-nose about its ideas and b) the themes and their treatment were generally more cohesive all around. I ended up writing a 6000+ word "review" on the game*, which is not something I feel I could do with Deadfire. As for the sequel I feel that it suffers a big problem in that it is never truly able to marry its metempsychosis and humanist themes with the colonial politics and backdrop, these two seem to me to exist in very different planes to one another - though granted, I have not played the latest patch which allegedly works on this very issue. More to the point, I also feel that with regards to the series' humanist and metaphysical themes the game is acting like a bridge between two more interesting and meatier chapters than being a particularly worthy standalone episode. If the series as a whole is about the passage of a theocentric society to a more anthropocentric one, then the first game acts as a revelation and as the moment the gods' authority, and their relationship with humanity, is put into question, yet remains unanswered at a more practical level - even when we find out the "truth", the divine/natural hierarchy as perceived by Eoran society remains unchanged. The second game, in this sense, feels pretty exclusively about the race to the conflict that will put this hierarchy and this relationship between the divine and human in crux, but again leaves the rethinking or reconfiguration of this relationship for an eventual third game. And so what you're left with essentially is a fantastic tease about topics and themes that would be looked into in the future, without tackling them fully in this episode itself, thus making it feel "emptier" on a thematic level as a result. For me anyhow. As for the second point, however, I just flat-out disagree with the first game being more stylish in its writing than the latter. Whilst I love Pillars (note: I'm using "Pillars" as a reference to the first game specifically because it's easier to abbreviate it that way relative to Deadfire) for the themes it touches on and the way it expands on them, a lot of the dialogue was also often very flat and expositional, telling ideas as they are straight at the player, often to less effect had they been insinuated instead. Lady Webb and Iovara are two egregious cases in point for this, merely existing for being massive info dumps and, in the latter's case especially, exposing the game's ideas so ponderously and hamfistedly that they actively undermined their enduring power. Deadfire isn't without its more expositional moments but even in the worst ones, i.e. our conversations with the gods, there's an effort made to involve several parties and mindsets and make them into more of a conversation and back-and-forth of ideas which at the very least made these scenes appear more dynamic in feel. More to the point, a stroke of brilliance in Deadfire's writing is that the game really manages to create and capture very different feels and cadences for each culture and the way they talk and interact with one another. A Huana never sounds like a Vailian or an Aedyran or a Rauataian, you can tell right away who you're talking to and not just because they say the occasional "ekera" or "Tangaloa" or "I say". Every character seems to have their own dialect or idiolect, thus making them feel like their own unique voice in this setting. The work put into capturing this aspect and highlighting it as strongly in a setting that is precisely about colonial-era cultural clashes is really a master stroke for the game, and really has the first game beat. Again though, we must return to the first point: whatever dip in writing quality you perceive between Pillars and Deadfire, they were neither big enough to affect the overall reception of one game relative to the other, nor something I reckon has any significant effect on why one game sold better than the other. Part of the reason is that even if you were to find the writing in Deadfire to be worse, you would only know after having played the game, which in most cases would imply you'd already bought the game anyways; and if it is worse, it certainly wasn't worse enough for players and reviewers to make note of it consistently across their reviews, at least enough for it to leave an impression on people who were on the fence about buying it. If anything, dialogue and writing were still often highlighted as strong points in favour of the game in user and professional reviews alike, regardless of what forums like this or the Codex would argue. The other point is that for every person that criticized Deadfire's writing, in my experience and as per the devs' own feedback there were as many or more who complained about the first game being too wordy, too drab and serious, that the dialogue wasn't voiced thus forcing players to read through several novels' worth of text, that the story felt distant and alienating, and so on. In their videos during Deadfire's production the devs talked about how they were trying to add more levity, to reduce the amount of exposition and descriptive dialogue, how they were committed to adding more V.O., how they wanted to have a clearer hook into the story, and so on, all in response to these same complaints. If anything I think an argument could be made that the writing in the *first* Pillars - and its lack of full V.O. - was a greater drawback for interest in Deadfire than any concerns in Deadfire's writing specifically. But the final point I'd make here regarding writing as a drawback is the following: even if we'd agree Deadfire's writing was worse than Pillars', is it so much worse so as to drive people away from it in a medium where BioWare, Bethesda and Ubisoft games receive praise for their writing? Even at its worse I don't see how Deadfire's writing is possibly worse than post-KOTOR BioWare, or Assassin's Creed Odyssey, or The Elder Scrolls, or Divinity: Original Sin or Pathfinder: Kingmaker or even the Witcher series for that matter. Regrettably I just don't think "good writing" is that strong a hook in this medium. This point is the one I have the strongest disagreement about. Much as I love the first Pillars and think its side-content was mighty fine throughout, it is night and day compared to Deadfire's own, almost but not quite the jump equivalent to Baldur's Gate onto Baldur's Gate II. In Pillars most of the quests are relatively small and straight-forward, dealing with tiny missions that start and end with themselves. Much like the kid looking for his lost dog in Baldur's Gate, the flavour given to these missions is often one of context, dressing, thematic input or a clever subversion to the same (think the looters at the bridge for example), but on their own they're pithy and to the point, hardly memorable as a "quest". Those which are longer, beefier and which act almost as the set-piece to a particular section or act of the game are few and far between, be they the assault on Raedric's Hold, the exploration of the Endless Depths of Od Nua, or the Skaenite cult at Dyrford. Raedric's Hold is particularly interesting amidst these inasmuch as it can often happen as a response to *other* quests and deeds you've been doing around Gilded Vale, and is itself succeeded by a small quest later in the game; yet this one aside, the only other quests that seem to connect to others to form something of a narrative of their own are really just the faction quests, which themselves are not that extensive as arcs the way they are in Deadfire. If we look at Deadfire however, whilst there's several quests in the game that are small and self-contained, this same sort of reactivity and interconnectivity is seen far more frequently, and the end result is that what initially seems like a simple quest can soon lead to a new quest and to another right after, thus creating an adventure or side-story all of its own. See the Arkemyr arc for example: you arrive at Periki's Overlook and find two people who want you to infiltrate Arkemyr's manor and retrieve a sacred text from within, offering you several options to enter the manor whilst you're at it. One of them involves getting Fassina to give you her key, should you want to enter through the front door. Chances are that at this point you haven't entered the Dark Cupboard yet, and with this piece of information you're then prompted to do so, upon which you witness Fassina's companion stealing a pair of gloves from the shop. This in turn prompts another small quest which takes you to a different district to attempt to get these gloves back. Being able to acquire the gloves, getting the key to the manor, and then stealing the sacred text and so on, you are then contacted at the moment of delivering the text by Arkemyr, who then opens up the quest Bekarna's Folly, which leads you to confronting Concelhaut again and finding out about the current of souls leading to Ondra's Mortar and so on. At the end of it all, what you have there is a riveting adventure spanning three individual quests that all seem to have naturally sprung from one another as a consequence of your actions and exploration. That's exactly the sort of thing Baldur's Gate II for example excelled at, and where many other RPGs including some of Obsidian's own don't often do: transforming quests into actual adventures and not mere objectives in a list of things to do. Deadfire does it here, but it also does it with the Storms of Poko Kohara, with Blowing the Man Down and our eventual interactions with Aeldys, with the maze of quests and areas that is the Gullet, with the conflict between the Valeras and the Bardattos, with any of the far deeper faction questlines and so on. Even what seem like a normal set of bounties can eventually give you a map that has you travelling to and discovering the Drowned Barrows, which in turn may have you searching across the Deadfire for a set of spellbooks for an overgrown imp which yet again leads to a ghost port and its own wacky adventure there. Deadfire's quests aren't just meatier, they're also better interconnected so as to create the impression of stories and adventures in a way no other game has since Baldur's Gate II in my opinion. This is all without touching on the flexibility offered by these quests either. The first Pillars offers plenty of flexibility in certain spots such as with the three-path design for Raedric's Hold, but this isn't nearly as consistent and integrated as a general design philosophy as it seems to have been for Deadfire. It really does feel like every quest and situation offers you several paths to not just resolve a certain conflict, but to *get* to that resolution as well. This isn't an attempt to knock Pillars down, but rather to state that to me Deadfire is a masterclass in quest design. I really don't buy this. I haven't seen anything that suggests Obsidian is somehow displeased with Deadfire as a game or as an artistic product. The disappointment I've seen stems from its commercial success or lack thereof, or with very specific elements like the ship-to-ship combat, and not because it's somehow a less "worthy" game. The existence of bugs and the discontinuation of support isn't a result of their lack of love for it but simply the fact that the game didn't perform well and that it's not in their best financial interests to keep a group patching and working on the game a year after release. Far as I'm concerned, they did what they could. They rebalanced the game completely a few patches in, they released three expansive DLCs (one of which is absolutely brilliant, if you don't mind my saying so), they added a whole new combat mode and even introduced new narrative content in response to feedback. Pillars in comparison was a much more successful game and its success easily justified its continued support - but with the way Deadfire performed, if anything it's a show of commitment that they supported the game for as long as they did and with as much post-launch content as they ended up making. As for the rest of your points, OP, I don't disagree with them as individual criticisms of the game... Yet I still hold that none of them explain Deadfire's disappointing performance. Again, I don't feel that any of these points were brought up with the kind of frequency or gravity so as to drive people away from purchasing it - and most that do share these thoughts will have already played and likely purchased it anyways, as they'd have no other way of making such specific qualitative assessments otherwise. I have my own thoughts about how maybe there's certain elements of the style of the first Pillars and the franchise altogether that could have contributed to a general disinterest in the franchise, but I'll get to it in a separate response. *I'm not sure why, but currently the only copy I'm finding of the review I wrote is hidden in a spoiler tag in this post, if you'd like to read it:

Dolemite Is My Name was fun! @Hurlshot THERE. YOU HAPPY NOW?

There's a well-known bug regarding Parvati's quest, apparently caused by a bug where the game assumes Parvati to be dead. If you can, reload a save from before the quest failed and try again. My understanding is that the trigger for this bug is that if Parvati's climbing a ladder when you engage in conversation, she will continue to climb and will exit the map entirely, causing the game to proclaim her dead at that point. So, keep Parvati away from stairs, keep a backup save, and all should be good.

Well, that's because it's not the best choice, it's Spacer's Choice! (Sorry, couldn't help myself.)

It is, in part, though not in English. I break paragraphs when I need to, i.e. when I've finished developing a central idea and move on to a different one - y'know, just the way paragraphs are meant to be split up. Some will be longer, some will be shorter. I certainly don't have to break for every sentence the way you seem to be doing here, though fair enough, I could've broken my paragraphs further at precisely two instances. So I've gone ahead and done so, cheers.

I have to say, Pillars didn't feel slow for me at all, and I found the combat to be quite enjoyable which is way more than I can say about Neverwinter Nights 2. The combat in the latter is atrocious.

I suppose it depends what one means when saying they want the game to be harder. If by "harder" you mean "more health/damage", then I would be vehemently against it - but a smarter AI for example could offer a greater challenge and more depth and so on. I would also suggest that if the game is to become harder, it'd maybe be a good idea to remove some encounters from Monarch as even in its current form it feels a bit overloaded with trash fights*. That said, I'd agree that the combat feels a tad on the easy side in normal. Also, I absolutely disagree that Supernova is the answer. Supernova might be a fun mode for some but it is an entire different game mode, and is very much aimed at a niche that isn't necessarily the same as the one that wants more challenging combat. I'll speak for myself in saying that I have not interest in perma-death, fast-travel limitations or sleep/eat/drink mechanics. I'm not saying they shouldn't be there, they absolutely should be since a portion of the playerbase enjoys the challenge these aspects offer, but I for one would simply like what mechanics are already in place in a normal playthrough to be more challenging. *Edit: Actually, maybe it's not an issue of encounter density so much as how frequently they respawn. Maybe by delaying the respawn timer, the feeling of trash mob overload could be drastically reduced.

Pretty much as you say, the Baldur's Gate games work really well for what Forgotten Realms ought to be. It's a fun, pulpy adventure, with plenty of character and personality throughout. It also has one advantage over many other RPG series in that every part of the "trilogy" (so far as we assume Throne of Bhaal to be a third part of the story) also feels like its own part in a greater, seamless overarching narrative as opposed to a series of addendums made to a stand-alone story simply because the first game in the series sold well. The game isn't especially deep but there's a decent thematic core at the centre that lends the story enough purpose and focus throughout to make the trilogy feel like a unit, which is more than can be said for a lot of videogame sagas out there. But Baldur's Gate II also especially shines with its quest design, really: off the top of my head there isn't a single quest throughout the game that feels like a mere fetch-quest or bounty or the likes, whilst some of the longer quests feel themselves like really compelling adventures that could have easily acted as the main plot to countless other games. I don't think there's any game since that's quite succeeded at making every quest within it act as an interesting short story of its own and not merely a task to get some gold, items or experience from. Even Deadfire, which I think is a superior game in many respects, has plenty of quests which also reduce themselves to being mere bounties or two-step tasks. Whilst sure, the choice and consequence can be a bit lacking, the morality behind the options available can often be very clear-cut (I don't recall a single complicated choice I had to make as a "good character" in the entire Baldur's Gate saga, or any situation where I felt I had to deliberate between several morally-grey options), several of the quests can be pretty inflexible and unrewarding for evil or neutral playthroughs, and plenty of the dialogue can come across as "flat" or merely functional, the game is just brimming with immensely enjoyable stories, and that is absolutely a triumph of the narrative team. As you say, it doesn't need to be War and Peace. Same for The Outer Worlds really, which I'd argue is the better-written game as well, even when it falls short in that aspect I mentioned Baldur's Gate II excells at. What I would add as a small caveat here, and why Disco Elysium seems like such an exciting game for me at least, is that it's extremely rare that a game will *want* to be its own Gravity's Rainbow, or its own War and Peace or Moby ****. I feel that level of ambition is often lacking in the medium and I would like to see more of it. Obsidian has pressed beyond mere escapism several times before (it's why I rate them so highly, really) and I do think The Outer Worlds presents one of its pulpiest products thus far, even if it also takes itself seriously enough to overcome being just that; but I guess where I would agree with others is that I would love to see them take this setting to stranger places and delve deeper into more provocative themes and interesting ideas in the future.

Oof, hard to say. Right now I'm feeling as follows... Felix Nyoka Parvati SAM Vicar Max Ellie I've touched deeper on each character in this post. Still, for a few more observations here... I think all of them sans Ellie are really close to one another and could easily overtake the other depending on my mood or what I choose to give precedence to at the given moment. I think Max for example is fantastic and really helps develop what I feel is one of the main underlying themes of the game, being that the colony's starvation isn't a physical one so much as an ideological one (hence why what's important about the Hope isn't just the people but the ideas that they bring with them); yet the reason why I don't rate him higher is because I feel the resolution to his personal quest was rather poorly handled. Parvati's lovely but I don't feel she's as central or as committed to the story as Max, Felix or Nyoka were, which is why I rate her a little lower on the list. Ellie's the only one I didn't really care for, as explained in the above post - I felt her nihilism came across as really one-note and I also don't feel like she moved a bit as a character in the entirety of my playthrough. Still, at the very least she provided some good banter with the rest of the crew.

Just finished the game myself. I have to seriously disagree with the Starwars' statement... Granted that there's few things more subjective than what makes one laugh, but I disagree with this on two fronts: firstly, I certainly laughed a lot through the game, I thought plenty of the jokes were witty, well-delivered and helped give even some of the most throwaway quests or encounters plenty of character. Interactions with the mechanicals in general were amidst my personal favorites, with the likes of Auntie Cleo's Groundbreaker mech attempting to feign shock and offense at your remarks against it, ADA's frequent psychopathic tendencies, or SAM's constant barrage of slogans and zingers mixed with his new violent program, all being highlights. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is that I think the pervasiveness of the humour is deeply overstated as well, for the most part - yes, the game does feature plenty of on-the-nose satire, but when it's time for the game to delve into darker or more tragic scenarios, it doesn't shrug these off with a throwaway joke, and when applying some manner of gallows humour does so pretty sparingly and never in a fashion that is jarring. Despite your later comments about Nyoka's character and portrayal as an alcoholic, I don't recall a single joke cracked through her companion quest for example. When we read into the experiments carried out by Chartrand, or the fate of the Hope's crew, there's genuine mystery and grimness respectively that is approached with the earnest tone such scenarios need/deserve. The game certainly doesn't laugh off the colony's plight, even if the portrayal of bureaucracy, capitalism and the upper class can often be broadly satirical and infused with the absurd. In many ways the tonal balance in the game isn't unlike that of Terry Gilliam or Wojciech Has' works (think Brazil for a clear reference for example), and also fits the pulpy "sci-fi serial" feel it's clearly going for and references several times throughout its length. Again, what hits one is really up in the air, but I will say that several sequences and situations certainly struck a chord with me. The whole story behind the Hope's crew for example was rather vivid and horrifying, and I say this as someone who personally knows a couple of people who've had to resort to cannibalism to survive a rather extreme situation. Plenty of the bureaucratic loops and situations of sheer corporate abuse in display here I've lived in the flesh and feel pretty grimly accurate despite the satirical and silly tone the game often goes for, where even the kinds of remarks uttered by the Byzantines feel verbatim what I've heard in occasions from members of the high class in Argentina. All of which, of course, makes the whole thing funnier (to tie to the previous point) and yet also rather nightmarish. Here my initial question would be: how much time did you spend with your companions? Did you bring them along despite not wanting to? Anyways, going down through each: Parvati is indeed extremely likeable, and I would probably agree with you that her quest doesn't do much to transform her character or press further upon the aspects that define her. That said, I would also hesitate to say it's pointless, or claim it wasn't enjoyable on my end. I do think it reflects a fair bit on the kind of character that she is and where her vision is often centered in opposite to that of the other characters - her motives to join you do seem more a wide-eyed desire to get to explore the world and find a place in it, and in a way the fact that she does with Junlei seems entirely in line with what her expectations of life in the colony for her would be. She isn't a revolutionary, she isn't a privateer, she isn't haunted by past events and decisions that she feels in need to right. Maybe the game could try to challenge her naivete a little more the further we delve into the story and into the state of the colony as well as the Board's plans, but in many ways this is also what sets her aside from Felix who is likewise naive and infatuated with an adventurous/heroic notion of a 'revolution' but only grows more aware of the meaning of one the more he travels the system and so on. Generally I agree that she seems like the most static companion, not counting SAM who is his own separate thing of course (and maybe Ellie too). Not sure annoying is a word I'd describe Vicar Max with though there's certainly a abrasive quality to his person that is described early on by the members of Edgewater and is also visible frequently in the way he interjects and takes command of conversations he's in, often siding with the more "system-driven" options like MSI, OSI and the Board and so on, at least until his companion quest is finished. Honestly I found him to be quite enjoyable as a companion, I appreciated his discussions on faith throughout the game which I also believe added this very strong thematic thread of the propagation of ideas and philosophies as nourishment for a society and progress, that much in the way Slavoj Zizek describes the infertility in Children of Men being an ideological and spiritual one and not just as physical one, so is the starvation in the colony one of ideology and not just one of food. My one criticism about his arc is that I do feel the resolution to his quest is the one part where the writing did completely falter for me, coming across as a bunch of empty, cliché platitudes delivered so earnestly and mechanically that they just felt like they outright belonged in r/im14andthisisdeep. This aside, however, I do think Max's arc is a strong one, I think his transformation is rather interesting if a tad abrupt, and, again, one which does explore an interesting facet of the game's central themes as well. Moving back to Felix, I guess I can understand how he could come across as annoying being that he's portrayed as a naive idealistic guy with a desire for adventure largely built on the serials he's consumed in his life and so on; but I do think he's also probably the strongest-written companion as well. His companion quest seems almost moot to his arc, which really develops across and in reaction to the main story instead. I do wonder how much of his transformation is tied to our choices and so on, but speaking from my playthrough of the game, what I saw with Felix was someone who approached the spacer life with starry-eyed idealism and saw his beliefs and worldview tempered as the icons of his youth, with people like Graham or Harlow, proved to not be the people he once imagined. He first comes on board as a bit of a fish out of water playing to be a space pirate, but by the end of the game has pretty clear and passionate convictions grounded on what he's seen and experienced and not merely on some romantic idea of revolution. Like Max he's also one who takes strong and determined stances on conversations and actions that bother him and who's quick to voice his support for that which he agrees with - and in doing so I wouldn't be surprised that in a more Board-allied playthrough he'd be a strong antagonistic force in the party (though I haven't played through that path yet so I can't claim this with any certainty). Ellie's pretty handily the weakest of the lot for me, and the only one which I feel nonplussed about at the end of the game. I find it curious that she was made the "face" of the game in the marketing campaign when she also feels like the companion that is the least involved in the central story, aside from SAM who I once again place in a somewhat different category to the rest. Her "rich kid with daddy issues on a rebellious/nihilist streak" theme provides a fun enough episode about the high class' two-facedness but doesn't really add anything to the story that isn't already apparent all throughout Byzantium, and in terms of interactions with other companions and NPCs seems to often act as the catalyst for situations that say more about everyone around her than herself. The Fry/Leela dynamics between Felix and herself for example are amusing and endearing more because of Felix's input than her own, and it does feel like her only mode is to act pragmatic and jaded before everything and everyone. Even if at the end of her quest you can manage to coax out an admission of sympathy or care from her, she's quick to dismiss the scene as "mushy" and it's not as if we can't see a similar concern or attachment in denial right from the start with her. I'll straight-up disagree with your description of Nyoka as a "funny alcoholic", even if some jokes are played at the expense of her alcoholism (I only particularly recall two instances: her introduction at the Yacht Club and during her interactions with SAM in the ship). Generally speaking however, I don't think her arc is made light of, nor is the alcoholism trope particularly overplayed. Her story and arc may be fairly cliché inasmuch as it plays on the death of loved ones and a feeling of guilt or non-closure leading her to drink and how we eventually help her find some closure, but as far as that arc goes, I think it's pretty decently executed and makes her a pretty empathetic character. With regards about how effective her story proves to be, I also think it's in no small part that unlike Ellie, Nyoka exceeds whatever archetype one may want to file her under and doesn't lean into the more "jaded/self-concerned" side of that archetype either. She has a genuine interest in the future of Monarch and earnestly engages in political discussions with the protagonist and other characters whilst defending her own set of beliefs on these matters, which themselves are pretty interesting and idiosyncratic. She's arguably the strongest voice in the game in favour of a middle road between the unfettered capitalism of the Board and the radical, anarchist stances of the deserters and Iconoclasts. And on top of it all her hunting stories, much like Ash's for that matter, are quite evocative too. Lastly there's SAM who is in something of a different category to all other companions, partly because he isn't fully sentient to begin with. He doesn't really have an arc, or is particularly in need of one either - he's certainly there for comic relief, mostly riffing on the notion of a sanitation robot being reprogrammed as a killing machine and how cleaning zingers, pre-programmed responses and so on could be absurdly twisted or weaved into violent acts or used as automated responses for all manner of questions. He's akin to this setting's Nordom, in a way (I will say that Nordom is a stronger character because he did have an actual arc across Torment, but again, he was in a position to have one unlike SAM). Again, as I've mentioned with my opening paragraph, what makes each person laugh is up in the air, but personally I found SAM to be hilarious and endearing, providing plenty of witty, absurd banter, and being performed to perfection by the voice actor. Save Ellie and maybe Parvati I can't say I agree with your stance on them, and even ignoring the companions themselves I feel the game offers a variety of memorable NPCs elsewhere as well. Be it Phineas Welles, Martin Callahan, Zora Blackwood, Sanjar Nandi, Graham Bryant, Sophia Akande, Gladys, and more, there's plenty of characters throughout that feel colourful, insightful, funny, or simply possess their own quirks and idiosyncrasies that make them stick out in my mind. I really don't feel there's a drab moment in the game as a result. I will also say that I've heard others express disappointment in the writing following their playthrough of Disco Elysium, which I'll be tackling shortly... Yet I think this comparison isn't really fair, myself. As I've mentioned earlier, the intention behind the game's tone and feel are certainly inspired by and aiming for a particular pulp sci-fi serial feel, whereas everything I've seen of Disco Elysium strikes me almost Pynchonesque in its rambling, post-modern pop-culture collage approach. I suspect it'll be the better game of the two and the one which will stick more with me as a favorite since that's the kind of literature and feel I tend to enjoy more, but again, taken for what it's going for I think The Outer Worlds has done a superb job as well.

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So this thread is a bit of a two-parter really... For starters, there's the following problem: the game seems to allow for two options to be taken when dealing with reactivating the automechanicals, either to have them target each other or to target the people at Edgewater. However, both lead to the same result. Is this intended? The option to target other mechanicals instead would seem like a decent enough loop to spare the town, yet that doesn't happen. For all intents and purposes this doesn't seem like intended behaviour, but if it *is* working as intended there seems to be only one way to carry out the mission, which is... Disappointing, to say the least. There should be more options to deal with this, much as there are with double-crossing Akande when planting the bug in Phineas' base. Is there any way this quest could be looked into?

I have to agree here. It makes little sense that after helping Phineas by sending a corrupted signal, we couldn't do something like this for this quest too.

For the record, in case my previous message may have been misinterpreted as a complaint on the game's economy, I have no issue with bits being scarce - if anything it makes perfect sense in a setting that is deliberately touching on ideas such as the hoarding of resources by the few and the scarcity the many suffer in turn, the overinflating of prices, and the likes. In games especially, a good economy is one which doesn't allow you to buy everything you could possibly want and still have a mountain of currency at your disposal. But it's also true that tinkering is the only real money-sink in the game and it's not as psychologically rewarding as finding an awesome item at a vendor's store and acquiring it with hard-earned cash (in-game of course).

There's two pretty different issues for me here. As with others I find tinkering is usually extremely expensive and a money-sink that can very quickly deplete your 80.000 bits on simply maxing out a couple of weapons. Likewise I don't thing you ever get to the 300k+ territory you do in many other games of this ilk, where money does become completely irrelevant. At the same time, however, I agree that the array of items is largely disappointing, especially with regards to unique gear - science weapons aside, very few of the unique weapons and armour can't already be crafted with the right mods, and often are lacking the mod slots to improve beyond any normal weapon or armour of its type. The Euthanasia Kit is a fine example of this: I have no idea how this weapon separates itself at all from any other tactical shotgun in the game beyond the fact that it's a certain level and has no mod slots whatsoever. If it's meant to have a unique property, I'm not seeing it. Meanwhile the Ultimatum's uniqueness is also rendered meaningless when you're later able to buy what is essentially a better "pulse gun" at any vendor machine. Whilst I understand how making more wacky science weapons can be costly and require resources Obsidian didn't have, at the very least the passives on other weapons and gear could be more interesting or feel more useful - and to bring it back to the topic at hand, they could also be for sale, costly, and provide something else to spend our bits on.

There used to be a time when I was a bit more confused about this perceived drop in writing quality some circles complained about, but it's increasingly obvious that most of the people that do are often either the Avellone stans that want to stick it up to the "Man" they perceive in Obsidian following his remarks around the time of Deadfire's release, or the anti-SJW crowd that froth in the mouth at the inclusion of LGBT characters and POC and so on. Mostly they hang out in the Codex and /v/, which says enough on its own. Truly, the writing and worldbuilding in The Outer Worlds and Deadfire is no weaker than that of previous Obsidian games and if anything a damn sight better than the likes of Wendersnaven Nights 2, with every conversation being filled with character and detail and offering plenty of interesting options and branches that likewise give your own "silent character" more personality than a mere choice of morality/belief, and always having strong and interesting themes and ideas guiding the story and lore.

My understanding is that by using the inhaler you're consuming one of each slot you're using at once. So you can mix up different buffs and properties and the likes through it, or merely make buffing faster and more efficient.

I think that the one advantage of games with a more rapid character growth or with a greater high-level focus in the IE system tend to work better from a combat standpoint simply because of the inherent flaws in the system. Standing about missing eight consecutive hits over eight consecutive turns is a kind of tedium that not even Planescape: Torment has to deal with for long. Planescape: Torment certainly has some of the worst combat in the game but I think it's mostly because it's really flat and undercooked, with no interesting or diverse encounters despite the array of creatures you meet along the way - but I do genuinely find Baldur's Gate to offer a more frustrating experience at the end of the day. And more to the point, contrary to any of the other IE games, Torment's focus isn't in combat either and a lot of it is either focused to very specific areas or largely avoidable as well. In other forms of gameplay (see exploration, investigation, dialogue interactions, etc.) I do think Torment has Baldur's Gate beat - and on top of this it also relies far more heavily on narrative or aesthetic elements which may age but not as badly as the technical side to the IE games. Generally speaking I do think Baldur's Gate feels just as arcaic from a design/mechanical point and is nowhere as enjoyable today as Torment.

New Lovecraft adaptation by Richard Stanley (how long has it been?) starring Nicolas Cage? Count me in!

It does feel like it's the clunkiest and most poorly aged game of the lot, but it's not entirely without its charm either. I quite enjoy Noah Gervais' take on the game, and also think that's one of the very rare few games that also allow you to play just "some dude" who isn't some demigod by the end of the campaign. Some might feel the game seems less epic or more limited as a consequence but there is a very particular feel surrounding those early levels and adventures of the sort that are notably different to that of many other RPGs centering more around Chosen Ones and the likes (and yes, I know the protagonist is ultimately the Bhaalspawn, but it's not really a thing that comes into play until the very end of the game, and mostly sets you apart in the sequel instead).

Some people can be pretty self-conscious about it too. Again, these are in the minority, but so are those who're saying "I'd give this an 8/10 but I'll give it a 10/10 instead for reasons".

Two elements I see repeatedly in Metacritic reviews is users who downvote because "the game is SJW", and users who downvote in *every single platform* the game is in, since their "review" isn't really a review but a statement they're trying to make. And of course it's also offset by bots and people who will upvote to "spite Bethesda" as well, so... Yeah, the user score is pretty useless.