Wormerine

It’s not an interview - just writing around some bullet points from Josh’s video, which they thankfully posted in “the article”.

Jeez, they still work on this game? Checked the story and amount of DLC is impressive/terrifying. It even has monthly subscription, which considering the price of the DLC might be fairly good value proposition . I tried Stellaris couple times. Tend to loose interest after couple sessions.

Shouldn't it say "most complete package since VI"? I can see the writer is clearly in the CivVI hate train, but it did launched really well rounded as far as systems go. Eitherway, CivVII looks intruiging. It promises a much needed shakeup and I am curious how it will turn out.

looks good. I finally installed KC:D1, and am looking forward to trying it out within the last couple months. I will probably wait till I am done with Avowed though.

Oh they know Mai's fanbase. The written updates have been drowning in innuendos. Below are all official updates from Capcom:

Yeah, there is something about characters design which doesn’t work for me. As to cutscenes, from what I understand they mocap movement for actors performance, but faces animations were build using a library of expressions. Considering the sheer volume of cutscene produced, the quality of them is impressive. They did feel rather…. bland to me. Still closer to classic Bioware’s conversation (unexpressive short/reverse shot), rather than a cinematic feel of something like Witcher3 - though of course, Witcher didn’t have to deal with such reactivity, custom PC and vac hanging conversation spots. still, I question value of a cutscene if it isn’t compelling to watch - I know I am in a minority though.

Mai!

So Jagged Allience3 is being offered in this months Humble Choice. I remember some people here played it extensively. How good is it? Worth picking up by a non-JA fan? (I bought and launched JA2 a while ago on steam, but never spent a meaningful amount of time with it).

I suggested before that it is Microsoft's way of adding "value" to Gamepass after hiking the price on consoles. "Look how many AAA $70 releases you get". On a sidenotes, it seems the floodgates have been open and games are in general pushing what they can charge.

Hmmm, Elden Ring reward system in a nutshell. Play not for the reward as most of the time you will be left disappointed.

Yeah, in general I hear that lower settings aren't what they used to be these days, and games tend to scale pretty well. I was worried about not being able to run Indy, but from what I watched I will be just fine. Still, it pains my heart to not be able to launch a game, max out all settings and still get 80-100FPS. Staying on a cutting edge is expensive. Need to find a better job.

Avowed and Outer World2 run on Unreal Engine5 so it will be more demanding to run - I worry how stuttery it's gonna be. I wonder if high graphics card requirements come from VRAM requirements, like with Indiana Jones. It seems Nvidia cleverly throttled available VRAM in all but most expensive GPU, so my rather pricey 3070 will become dated faster than I expected. Eh, I don't think there has ever been much hype generated for any of MS releases - just recently Indiana Jones was arriving like it was meant to flop, and by all accounts it is supposed to be pretty good. There are games that just don't trailer well. The decend chunk of gameplay I saw from previous looked promising. I am saying that, though, as I have intention of checking it on gamepass. I would never have a confidence to drop £60 to buy it on steam (or god forbid £80 to not have to wait to pay).

Back from holidays. Cleaned my PC, did fresh install of Windows, just to clean things up a bit, and bought some more RAM on discount bringing it up to total of 32GB. Time to get back to work: Street Fighter6 - still, playing, still getting better. Still not in Masters. Monster Hunter: World - I have been drifting away from this game. I enjoyed low rank a lot, but now as I am slogging through high rank the grind has been settling in. There are new monsters, yes, but to face some of them I need better gear which means fighting same monsters as before to re-craft same armours, but with higher stats, and also it feels it take far more kills/captures than before to craft said armours. I don’t feel like difficulty added much, beyond a more chaotic battlefield - it just feels like repeat of low rank, and I am just not into it. Still, doing a hunt or two every couple days, but the progress been slow. 4th Deadfire playthrough (this time principi) in preparation for Avowed. Some mods, including xp gain rebalance. Still, liking it a lot, perhaps even more so after taking a lengthy break. Relative lack of interactivity was noticeable after years of playing BG3, but I love the look of the game, and how smooth it plays.

It's Mary Poppins BTW, unless there is a joke here I am missing. Thankfully, Polish translation didn't try to polishise character's name. I hate when they do that.

Yeah, I hope some extra depth will go with it as well. Eh, it is just a trailer. With gamepass there is no way I won't be checking it out anyway.

While I play these days most of my games in english, I do understand to appeal of polish dubbing. I have very fond memories of BG1&2 Polish VO, though due to clunky translation I stick to eng version these days. That said, since RPGs started to use full VO I just haven't seen many games doing full translations. I don't mean to discourage you from asking for Polish VO, I just wouldn't expect it if I were you.

I am not outraged by the price. Diminishing returns law must apply and it makes sense that GPUs get more and more costly to make and sell. I am sure price gauging takes place, but I am also not surprised if they can’t reach a new level for performance without investing unreasonable amounts of money. What I do find unreasonable is the ongoing push for new expensive GPUs and better graphics while benefits stopped being visible to me quite a few years ago. Does God of War2 look better than God of War1? Eh, I suppose but I still think GoW1 looks better than I even need a game to look. We do however see more and more dominant games that aren’t on the cutting edge of graphics, so I wonder how much value there is in pursuing best GPUs. If I can’t run Great Circle well, that’s doesn’t make me happy but I also don’t think like I would be missing on something groundbreaking.

No, but also not bad for “your princess is in another castle” character that she was. I think potential is more important, than what she was in W3. She can be a great new protagonist - but she might as well not be. It’s all about the execution, so it’s up to CDPR to deliver.

Cause look to Disney to see that milking out dans favourite without a story to go with ot doesn’t go that well. Witcher3 wrapped up Geralt as a character. Sure, you could drag him back, but in the best case scenario they would undermine W3. I had three games with Geralt they ended with a high note and CDPR to move forward is a welcome sign to me. According to the interview on FPS podcast Geralt is still in the world, so we will see him, but CDPR is doing to expore a new character. It could be good it could be bad, we will see. Ciri should give them space to try something new. edit. I am quite surprised that there are people who are surprised that Ciri is the protagonist - that should be the most obvious choice for those who played and finished Witcher3. When someone asks „why Ciri” my counter question would be „have you ever played previous games?”

Yeah, I was wondering what you mean by Dodgeroll. My brain already forgot Path of Exile release, and returned to reading PoE as... well PoE.

While overall I see PoE2 as an improvement system wise, per-encounter resources and more limited access to skills for some classes did result in per encounter decisionmaking being more limited. Most of the game tends to revolve around having enough PEN, and everything else is 2ndary. When difficulty is tuned just right, I think it is a good system. It is not until the DLCs that Obsidian was able to dial in combat more, though it has some issues as well (like some encounters going on for far too long). Have you modded the game at all? I could be that the game is simply to easy for you - PoE2 has difficulties keeping up a difficulty curve due to its open world. I tend to use XP mods to make my party less overpowered after initial island, and there is of course Deadly Deadfire for those looking to spice things up. Still, I didn’t find “I am doing the same thing in every encounter” to be as bad in some other games (cough DOS2 cough), but it is not quite as tactically interesting as I think it tries to be. Still I play those games for story and world, and with some XP rebalance mods combat is way better than it needs to be for my purposes.

No kidding, that could actually be fun.

Is it? It looks to me incredibly cynical - like how much more we can recycle and sell. The only thing about this trailer which gives me any faith if "FromSoftware".

That's looks... like more Outer Worlds that for sure. I am looking forward to hearing about the improvements to the combat and/or roleplaying systems, as while I liked OW1 it did feel too shallow for it's length already, so twice as much of Outer Worlds doesn't sound as enticing, even if it is prettier (aka. require pricier hardware to run).

So while Epic, Multiplayer and Immersive Sim isn't what I like hearing together, one a face value I do see a potential appeal. VS encounters from Deathloop were easily the most interesting part in that game, as setting up a competitive thief like experience could be interesting. Of course, multiplayer brings bunch of challenges on top of usual Immersive Sim - netcode and balance - and in general I am rarely compelled by multiplayer games - but will be keeping an eye on this one.