Wormerine

Time to play a game: “let’s overanalyse each word that comes from Tim’s mouth to try to figure out what he is working on at Obsidian: 5:00 1) Tim knows I am watching and is too smart to reveal he is working on a new IP 2) Tim works on existing IP 3) Tim works on a new IP, but it is not his. I still know nothing.

Well, BG3 spend 5ish? years in EA, so it checks out. Good luck with Act2. My 1st playthrough stopped there, I slogged through it in 2nd playthrough, and two consequent attempts stopped in act2 as well. I don't think you need to do all of its content to progress, and I wonder if my completionist mindset works against me in that act. It is soooo big, and narratively rather static.

Strange, It says it supports windows10. I was initially to suggest Linux, as BG3 has apparently a pretty great Linux support, but it seems GOG doesn't support Linux? Laaaame

If AI could truly think for itself, wouldn’t it just develop its own biases and bull****? AI is a human creation and it will be controlled and influenced by people. It is not and will not be an all knowing, all-wise and fair god.

Well, also Fallout1. Still, I fundamentally don’t understand why the common need for “you do this now or you DIEEEEE. Also here is a world full of sideactivities to explore.” I mean I do get it. Universal thread of destruction is an easy narrative hook for a custom protagonist. It still just doesn’t make sense. Surely, your hook should be about exploration and discovery, and reason to engage with the world, not the opposite. Obsidian usually is good with this stuff, though I felt both Pillars did have this issue as well.

ok, finished Silksong. 100% completion, all achievemnents unlocked, but 4 ones speedrun and ironman related. I liked it very much. I have nitpicks, though a lot of it is related to optional content so I don't know how to feel about it. Some 100% requirements I thought were unreasonably tedious or obscure, but then again, it is completely optional to do so . I am sure someone figuring some things out, for me it was googling things out once I run out of ideas and went "how the heck was I supposed to find that?!". Not as good of a metroidvania as Hollow Knight, but much better action-platformer. Loved movement, really liked combat. Most bosses are excellent, few are tedious. Ah, I wasn't too fond of act3. The bosses that become available there are great, but overall I am not sure of the new content available there required an entire new act3. Then again, I thought Castlevania's reverse castle was a bit lame as well.

Well, maybe. If your story is "I have a ticking bomb and need to solve it ASAP", then I would say you either create a linear adventure that will support this story, or create more open adventure that still forces player to hurry and move forward. I just don't think urgency and here is massive world full of optional content mesh together. Neither is a bad choice, and I just don't those two choices go well together. And of course, various games suffer from it in various ways. That a problem is common, doesn't make it non-existent, and if you make narratively centric game, it sticks out if the experience of playing the game doesn't support said narrative - at least it does to me. If game builds up someone to be a powerful being they should be a difficult fight. If the game builds up something as urgent, at least it should provide narrative excuse as to why we might want to get distracted. I am not saying that such flawes make a game automatically terrible, but it might negatively impact the experience for some looking to get immersed in the story.

ha! Yes, I forgot how annoying the itemization was in D:OS2. I didn't watch the video, so am just replaying to your post. Even back in a day when Baldur's Gate2 was in my mind the gold standard for everything that is right and good, the dissonance between main quest urgency and what I thought was the intended and enjoyable way of playing the game stand out as a flaw. By principle, I believe that game's narrative should be tied to a gameplay exerience - if the narrative requires swift forward, gameplay should at the very least encourage it as well. If you go for laidback do what you want experience - come up with the scenario that supports it. I get that devs want movie like hook propelling things forward, but at least to me, it hurts it more in the long run. It forces me as a player to ask myself a question: "is the threat presented by the game narratively real or a facade", and I just don't think it's in games best interest to have me think that. That said, I didn't think Cyberpunk2077 was a particularly bad example of that, but it did roll my eyes every time V got "worse" after progressing main story a bit. It was just a bit too obvious that his condition doesn't exist unless one does very specific quests. I didn't find C77 story very effective, but that wasn't a part that suck out to me. To me Baldur's Gate3 was a far, far, far worse offender. In C77 there might be a bit of dissonance between the game's story and players affinity for side content but in BG3 the characters didn't seem to decide if they have a ticking bomb in their heads or not.

It will be interesting to see what they will keep from D:OS and D&D and what they will change.

Oh comeon, I don't think I have encountered a single trap like that. Though I did spent most of the evening banging my head against Karmelita yesterday. To be fair, it's been a while since I played so I am a bit rusty, and my stick drift does muddy up my execution.

Or were the original Divinity games mere spin-offs or turn-based RPG Sven really wanted to make in the first place?

Yeah, that’s something that I found disappoint as well. I wish I could Hitman my way through this entire quest. I tout quite an effort to try to find a systemic solution but at least in Early Access scripting seem to always get in the way.

Just when I thought to myself “I should really wrap up Silksong” and spend an evening hunting some of the few remaining secrets and bosses.

Well, it’s not Original Sin3, so I assume it will not play like those. I didn’t play previous Divinity games but from what I understand they were actionRPG. I assumed this new divinity would also be somewhere under his umbrella, though I can’t begin to guess what could it look like.

Hmm, I might concede on Giths as I don't think you can avoid fighting them if you do all of the content there. Goblins though - is great. In fact the Goblin camp is one bit of BG3 that I love without hesitation and if all of the game was of that quality it would be 10/10 game for me. It's organic, it offers narratively sound objectives that can be completed in a multitude ways utilizing a neat combination of scripted and systemic options. If you decide to obliterate the whole camp, that can be tedious but that's a very specific, systemic outcome - you decided to fight essencially a city of neutral NPCs, so you do just that. There are so many neat things you can do to affect that combat encounter - tip off Minthara about the location of the Grove, but then help defend the Grove, getting a pretty great big battle and massively reducing camp's forces. Poison the drink at the party to make the outside battle easier. Sabotage war drums so enemies you are fighting now can't easily call for help from the rest of the room. Plenty of opportunities to silently dispatch smaller packs of enemies before engaging everyone else. There are so many ways of dealing with the camp, thoughout my hours of Early Access it was one part of the run I was always actively looking forward to. It seems I was always able to find a fresh way to express how my NPC would deal with that situation. Even my palladin coldly fighting through the whole camp out of principle - it's tedious, but fitting the character and an act.

By that standard I would say Baldur's Gate3 has as many or as few trashmobs as you want, depending on difficulty level you pick and your skill and willingness to abuse some of game's systems.

It can be as many or as few as you want/need. 3 is very standard, can be four can be two or one. Probably more, but can't think of an example. For a symphony orchestra 1 piccolo flute, and two concert flutes are a pretty regular sight. Different compositions may call for a variety of of flutes and sometimes doubling may be required (multiple instruments playing the same part for balance reasons, though if the performance uses amplification that shouldn't be of a concern as things can be balanced by an audio engineer.) If you have pieces that call for a very unusual instrument, you might have a specialist who will play just that instrument when needed, and a more conventional flute section for the rest. I assume you refer to Game Awards? Didn't watch the actual show.

June 2020 and:

May I ask how would you define trashmobs? I would as repetitive encounters that offer little or no tactical variety that seem to exist to pad out the experience. I would say Pillars of Eternity had quite a few of them, Pillars2 not so much if at all, Kingmaker was drowning in them. Combat variety is BG3 is crazy good. There is plenty of encounters that have unique type of an enemy that will never appear in another part of the title. I do think it is slightly undermined by combat's poor balancing - so if one found an overpowered approach it will probably play the same no matter how one will approach the encounter. But no I don't think the game has too much combat, and it definitely isn't repetitive. Though I know you don't like combat to begin with, so it might not matter either way to you

Disco E doc part 2.

Couple things I disagree with and couple I agree. As far as enviroments and visual variety I think BG3 is 2nd to none. Every area is unique and handcrafted. If anything, my complain would be that each act is so distinct it almost feels like I am playing a different adventures. There are some similar sensibilities to Divinities - Larian gonna Larian. And I personally don't like some of them. Old ruins and temples tend to look more like alien spaceships then ruins. But I still see it as fairly small fault. I also think Engine itself if quite fabulous. In general, I would agree with you on 3d, but Larian offers interactivity that a static 2d engine would struggle to offer. I think the tradeoff is well worth it, though UI and controls could be done better. I like dice rolls. Never felt a need to reroll - inspiration points might be already generous, as I felt I can force through any check that I feel I should have won. But for some ability to reload will be too much of temptation, and overall I do prefer Obsidian's static check design for PC games. But it is D&D, and being a table-top ruleset D&D relies on dices. Personally, I found Disco Elysiums double dice system to work better - I think Josh S. have written about it at some point. Story wise - yeah, I always had issues with BG3 narrative. Really disappointment comes in act3 where they have to try to wrap everything together and try to pay of the promises off. I don't know why Larian games are they way they are - it feels to me like they just throw everything they can think of into the pot, and don't have defined big picture. A collection of non-linear, organic encounters can work well, but their worlds are so artificial and incoherent. I love that BG3 is, I just wish someone else made it

Heh, I doubt it. My guess is that they went through a list of common complaints (graphic is crap, VO amatourish, story crap) and attempt to address those 2nd time around. Let's be honest, is still doesn't look like a decent budget production. Still, I quite liked how "old school" Solasta1 felt, and I wonder how the sequel with end up. I really didn't care for the demo, while Solasta1 crowdfunding build made me a backer. I just hope that the more interesting aspects of Solasta won't get sanded off in pursuit of nicer presentation.

Solasta2 Early Access in March 2026. Voice cast is quite stacked which makes me a bit sceptical. Unless the story telling gets much much better than the original higher production might not pens them the low budget charm the original had. edit: