Wormerine

Ha! I am doing alright. There are a lot of things to like here, it’s just lacking certain amenities I’ve grown accustomed to. It’s certainly worth visiting! Interesting history and a lot to see. Some great hiking trails if you’re into such thing. Gin is pretty good as well.

We did indeed. 😃 Correct. Work-related.

Spectacle is all I got from Dunkirk, though I don't mean to criticise the film. I am also biased against Nolan's films, prefering his earlier, lower budget works. Blame hipster deep inside me. The only movie of his, though, that I genuinely didn't enjoy was Interstellar (and even that had individual bits that I liked). Dunkirk was a thrilling ride, and plane sequences were a personal highlight to me. By detatched, I do mean fantastical (Fury Road being one of the finer examples). No question about Dunkirk's quality and craft though. I will be seeing the rerelease of Apocalypse Now. Love the movie(s?), never had a chance to see it on a big screen. Sadly no IMAX in a dumpster that is Belfast (that's probaby my main complain since moving here about a year ago.)

It's just not something that really works for me. If we go for spectacle I like for it to be more detatched and visually appealing. Dunkirk did make me dip back into IL-2 Sturmovik once again though. Oh, I will certainly catch the rerelease of Apocalypse Now. Love the movie, never had a chance to see it on the big screen.

"The Irishman" looks like a shoddy attempt to recapture glory days of "Goodfellas". Except Pesci couldn't be bothered to do anything for a while now, and Scorsese is a class of his own, delivering quality stories for so many many years. I am sold. Which reminds me that I need to catch up on the more recent Scorsese movies. With fear I watch myself pick easy to swallow garbage, over challening and unpleasant cinema. 1917 from the trailer looks like Dunkirk - impressive spectacle. Meh.

Nevermind

Yeah. To be honest I never even liked solo runs - to me difficulty should be about making game more complex and nuanced, not imposing extreme limitations.

“Like Skyrim” might mean anything: possibly just moving away from top down, to FP open (or openish) world. Witcher, Gothic, Deus Ex might be to some extend described “like Skyrim”, whole not being “like Skyrim” at all. I would like for them to wrap up current storyline in a classic isometric/top down format before branching out. My attachment to PoEs comes from them being great isometric RPGs. If Obsidian makes a different genre game in PoE world, my interest in it will be more due to it being an Obsidian game, rather then a PoE game.

On my recent turn based playthrough, the only fight I wasn’t able to beat was the Dorudugan. The issue comes once again from certain abilities working differently - his AOE attacks hit all at once, without any warning as to were they might hit, massacring my entire party in one attack if my party placement was unlucky. I am yet to beat megabosses in RTwP but I feel they are easily the toughest enemies in the game, though it’s mostly due to required metaknowledge.

No, mostly going based on Kickstarter funds. While it not the whole budget game got, it it still less then 1/4 of Deadfire campaign, plus year of pre-fig development and its coming after a financially successful first instalment.

It can't be ignored that Owlcat worked on a far far tighter budget. One might make argument against making massive RPGs without resources to match the ambition, but crowd has spoken, game has been funded, and to be honest I have been fairly impressed with Kingmaker so far. It also cater to a very specific crowd - it is not bad thing in itself. Kickstarter games are a great place to do those kind of projects. I don't long for a faithful table top adaptation, but some people do. That's also a very backhanded compliment: "compared to X you are great!" Deadfire is great without being compared to other games. It is not "one or the other" situation.

For me the biggest addition is giving reason to care for factions politics for characters without roleplaying political affiliations, and some additional insight into Gods' actions.

Did you check what was the cause of death? (disintegrate?)

I don't think I understand. I don't understand how is Deadfire approach supposed to be different (it's not like we can loose our soul permanently) and most games don't provide gameplay mechanic to support the narrative (not that it is good, but...). In BG Seravok won't proceed in his quest, in BG2 you can't actually die due to getting your soul sucked out. Narrative is there to get readers/player attention and keep the "hooked". Whenever stakes are genuine or not it doesn't really matter. Personally, Pathfinder's timers did nothing to me, considering how dull the rest of the opening was. Tyranny opening and timer was great, even though the timer was so generous it might have not existed (fun fact: you can wait till the day of the swords before reading the edict and then you will have entire year to fulfill its requirement 😁 )

Both games have hooks: in PoE you will loose your sanity if you won’t find Thanos and gain answer to your question In Deadfire you have to find Eothas to regain your soul. Both hooks act more as excuses, and aren’t explored well throughout the game. That said, I am not quite interested in RPG telling me what my motivation is, and I found it fairly easy in Deadfire to define my characters motivation and act on them. I thought that the ending of PoE1 was well worth the metaphysical gibberish. Deadfire doesn’t really get a punchline though.

While i have a problem with the ending, it is more with „How” then with „what”. No, Pillars has never been about fantasy, adventure, power and choices. The genre it comes from was about that, but PoEs have been subverting those expectations. While you do have a certain freedom your character has never been able to influence events of cosmic scale - you might have stopped Thanos, learn the truth about the nature of Gods, but there is nothing you can do about it. You can interact with kith, and you do act as a link between kith and gods, but you are never a Gods equal. Gods after all, be it good or bad, helpful or parasites are beings well beyond your understanding or power. yes, you are Herald of Berath, but that makes you a puppet. It limits your ability to make choice, not enhance it. While you might hold some level of influence over other kith, it is only because Berath allows you, or forces you to do it. You might have felt powerful if you willingly used Beraths power to scare those soldiers at the harbour. And you would feel powerless if you tried not to do it. It was Berath’s action made through you, whenever you will it, or not. Unfortunately for them, Gods ability to directly attack Eothas are limited, and what might scare random soldiers won’t make an impression on a massive statue of ADR inhabited by a god. And even the most mythic creatures you get to slay in the game, are merely mortal creatures or aspects of a god. Keep in mind what took to kill Eothas when he used a mortal body. Think of what would be required to destroy him in Deadfire. If volcano eruption and tsunami wasn’t enough... what can YOU do? If you were able to challenge and defeat Eothas that would be very unlike PoE. However, the way it is handled is not ideal. Players to have certain expectations, and game doesn’t put a twist on them - just under-delivers on an expected finale. Meeting with Eothas would make for a nice epilogue, but not the climax of the game.

My wish list is short (less then 10). Big chuck of it are games that didn’t comeout yet, but got a steam page. Couple games I want but wait for deep deep sale.

I think it refers to overall theme, treatment of hero and its relative power to enemies around him.

I do think he is well written, just doesn’t have much to do or say about in Deadfire. I thought his personal quest was interesting, though a to brief to be properly explored.

Yes! There are some minor overall improvements to combat and UI, but most of all, there are additional story missions! Two I can recall on top of my head were related to companions (Gloria and the decker guy). Good stuff, and they make the most out of systems available in dragon fall. It is well worth the 2nd playthrough I think.

Well, why not. Here is my list: 1) PoE: Deadfire - in spite of my gripes: Deadfire represents what RPGs I like, and it does so many things, so very well. My main issues are when the game doesn't so as well, what the original did, but judging on its own, it's a pretty stellar RPG. 2) Shadowrun: Dragonfall - really good time with a limited scale. Replatibility isn't great as it's a very directed experience, but I played it twice and had great time both times. 3) Divinity Original Sin - very subjective. I played a big chunk of it with my friend and had a grant time. Still, finished it single player and it was brief enough to still be enjoyable. 4) PoE1 - mid game just wasn't interesting enough, but destiny was well worth the journey. 5) Tyranny - I liked the setting, characters and opening chapter, but there just was too much combat, and combat was too shallow to not drag it down. 6) Wasteland 2 - I would need to replay it, as it's been a while. And it was the first one I played in a long time, so my memories might be a bit too positive. BREAKING POINT Me do not like: 7) Pathfinder Kingmaker - game in early stages (finishing opening chapter I think) so it might change. So far it's alright - the system gives me some Nwn2 nostalgia. But it has so many problems. Combat can be tedious, balance seems out of wack, pacing is real bad, enemy composition dull. Writing is not done great - I don't have an issue with the light tone, but how unnatural, unlikable and awkward it feels. Divinity Original Sin2 - a big *I need to try it with a friend (preferably THE friend from D:OS1). Single player experience was really bad for me. Really tedious, too much time spend managing trash equipment, quests were so undefined and freeform it felt more like cleaning a map, then doing anything specific. 9) Shadowrun: Hong Kong - quite disappointed in this one. On paper it is a bigger and better Dragonfall - but nothing really worked for me here - didnt care for companions, areas felt large and empty, and Hong Kong made for a surprisingly dull setting. 10) Torment: Tides of Numenera - meh 11) Shadowrun Returns - really meh

Pretty much this. The whole crisist system is there (it's clunky) but I remember maybe two instances it was utilized. I enjoyed reading through the game, but the whole thing felt a bit too disjointed to be satisfying.

😂 Good one.

Never played it so can't say. Dark Soul was dope though. But, unless Demon's Souls is more of an RPG, in roleplaying sense, then I don't think it's an apt example. Doom is supposed to be great, and it has demons, but it's not a story drive RPG. I don't question demons as an appealing theme for visual design, but their narrative flexibility to become something interesting. Ah maybe. I mean to check the Inquisition out, but I am not interested enough (D:O is supposed to be still the best, and I didn't even like that one) to download Origin for it. I has been off my PC after the midsappointments that were DA2 and ME3.

I am liking it alright so far, though it is quite tedious experience. Writing is a mixed bag, though one thing which really annoys my is how your protagonist is all over the place - you can't really define him in any coherent ways. And then you have things like that: I don't think Bioware was ever that bad, and their love for massive exposition dumps is legendary (Yes, tell me about the history of dwarven race). I am trying to figure out if Owlcat are parodying RPG tropes of if its a genuine attempt.