Wormerine

Really? I still see White Marches as the best content made in Pillars of Eternity, with great storytelling, memorable fights, best city (or village) in the game, best combat dungeon (Durgan's Battery), best puzzle/choose your approach dungeon (Abbey of the Fallen Moon). BoW is a nice sidequest for the main game, White March is a proper journey on its own. Not intending on bashing Bow - it's a great addition.

Dumbed down compared to what? I agree, that sometimes the multitude of possible ways of approaching a quest can be delivered in a hamfisted way. Is there any point in BG2 or PoE where one had to think on how to resolve a quest? Deadfire delivers a much more complex and flexible quests than both of those games. I do agree that they way some of the soluti9ns are presented could be better handled. But it is hardly handholding or “dumbing down”.

I fought him recently and didnt have much problems. I was overleveled (level 17 or 18) with up-scaling. Can't remember doing anything specific. Giving his summons to deal with, while I clean the henchman, interrupt if he tires to do something nasty, arcane dumper and focus him after that.

I would recommend making up your own mind first but here is my take: Deadfire feels like sequel to PoE1, rather than an attempt to recapture magic of IE games. It might sound like weird, but I think that is important to understand - certain changes much surprise/annoy old fans. Overall, the quality of the game has improved IMO, with better design, more interesting and unique setting, tighter and more complex quest design, better storytelling. Depending how you like to play, the combat might be to your liking or not. For a party based experience I found it clearer and more elegant. There are couple things I am not in love with - I am conflicted about how companionsare handled: I occasionally love the system, but overall I feel that a more basic companion conversation system would achieve the same, if not the better effect. Secondly, while the storytelling might be better, the story necessarily isn’t. It has interesting stuff in it, but it lacks focus and payoff to be truly memorable. I enjoy playing through the Deadfire much more, but finishing it, didn’t feel as satisfying. Judging by the two DLC, I would strongly recommend them. They act as significant side areas to the base game. 1st DLC provides some excellent story content (which somewhat ties to the main story) and 2nd DLC adds some fun combat content, with a bit of story on the side.

Overal, I feel Eothas story could use a bit more of exploration, that is why I was so happy to see devs dip into it in Beast of Winter. Confusion as to what breaking of the Wheel will actually do, was probably my main criticism when the credits rolled (sort of: "BUT WHAT DOES IT MEAN...?!"). Josh talked about it in this tumblr post: https://jesawyer.tumblr.com/post/174058952291/so-is-the-idea-that-before-the-wheel Apparently, there was a detailed explanation at some point but it was cut. I hope for a more detailed explanation to appear in the 3rd DLC and it should continue the Berkana's research storyline, were the presence of "The Wheel" was heavily foreshadowed.

It's been changed couple patches ago, probably to encurage people to engage more with the system. The changed sparked some unhappiness among frequent figurines users.

Your opinion. I certainly don't feel that way. That's it is no good alone is certainly my opinion. However, there are multiple mechanics, which don't work when you play singleplayer, whenever it is arguing between character what to do, or dyeing a poison to fool your coop player that its a healing potion. Add to that that you can't switch between characters in dialogue, which makes sense if different people control, but is a poor design if there is only one player etc.

I think the difference is simple: D:OS1&2 are great coop RPGs. I had a wonderful time playing through the 1st chapter of D:OS1 with a friend, had a dull time beating the game myself, gave up on D:OS2 midway through. They are extremely tedious games when played alone, combat is fun when shared with a friend, not as engaging by myself. It’s a sandbox with a vast space for hijinks, but the game itself won’t really respond to you.

I played a bit recently and random encounters did take place.

I generally follow the way game Shepard’s me, so I found it to have a healthy mix of combat/exploration/conversation. However, as the experience is pretty freeform it is possible to go for a long time without combat, especially if you try to take on Nakataka in one go. I like how Deadfire handled items. I switch those often, but because I like the effects, not because the new sword does simply +1 damage more. The way I see it Deadfire is full of unique, “magical” items. There are few souldbound weapons, but they are rare. While they added a lot to boring weapon design of PoE1, I don’t really like or use them that much in Deadfire.

You know what happened: Microsoft saw this thread: https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/106183-lets-have-an-intervention-to-save-boeroer-from-his-gaming-addiction/ and decided to help you.

Ha! Didn’t even knew that there was an XCOM novel. Not gonna touch it. I think streamer BeagleRush really nicely summarised Legacy Ops: Drunk Bradford’ stories. Lore wise, they are idiotic and don’t make any sense - enemies which were supposed to be new in main campaign show up (even avatars!), plasma weapons simply show up in your hands. Stories are somewhere between amusing and cringey (going through the 2nd one right now). Lovely to see old maps, and classic assets. The missions are actually more entertaining as they are better balanced than your usual campaign.

I will take Isometric camera over rotaty 3d thing any time. That said, just like it was the case with NWN2, a big sell of Divinity2 is it's custom content creator package, and it is easier to make a lever editor for 3d than isometric I guess... I think? Starcraft2 is isometric and also has leveler editor no? Need to give Divinity2 another chance now, when new stuff is in. Someday.

We will see about Phoenix Point. It is still early in development and things will probably change a lot. Looking forward to what changes will the next year update bring. On paper it looks like a good combination of new XCOM and Gallop’s sensibilities. We will see how it will work at the end. New XCOMs simply aren’t old XCOM. I am completely fine with at. I have installed, at all times, a new XCOM and openxcom. Firaxis take has a lot going for it, though there are individual design decisions which don’t really work for me. Pod Activation mechanic is the biggest gripe for me. While I understand idea behind it (give each encounter a decent challenge) the result is, that how you activate the pod is the biggest factor in winning/loosing the fight. Long War1 played into it, while XCOM tries to cover the problem by adding stealth mechanic (you can see were pods are and active them on your terms) and added timers which force you to make bad activations nonetheless. Add to that the heavily scripted nature of XCOM missions and the whole thing becomes repetitive and occasionally frustrating. Snd very shallow strategy layer. Still, XCOM2 is stuffed with so many things that I return to it every once in a while.

I would rather have them do, whatever it is they are doing. They are game devs, not streamers or weekly online friends. Whenever there is new thing happening it is great to be able to communicate with devs, ask questions, see their perspective. As it is right now, I know that if there is Obsidian stream I have a reason to watch it. If they do it weekly no matter if they have something to discuss or not, then I will simply stop watching them all together.

Even if the pull it together it seems like a game that will get dull very fast. Take a break for real life errands, to do errands in space world. I can’t wait to play star citizen and ride a metro system to the space port! Really, just a single player campaign would have been grand. Can I have my Freespace3 now?

It's also possible that Obsidian assumes one might go to Magran's Teeth sooner than I tend to go. I generally do all available faction quests first, which means I am pretty much done with majority of games content. In future playthroughs I will probably try to go to MT ASAP to be able to not do SSS in one go.

Well, we are talking about PotD, which unfortunately due to XP float and a lot of mid level optional content you will be way overleveled for half of the game. I found DLC to be really well balanced for the level they are designed for and they scale well. I played both on Veteran and they gave me precisely the level of challenge as advenrtised - keep me on my toes and pay attention to what is happening with occasional death. I hope of a much bigger challenge on my current PotD run. No one advocates increasing lower difficulties, but a more consistant challenge throuout the experience would be welcome. Certainly going to mod the game for my 3rd run. With the loose design of Deadfire I am not sure how Obsidian could fix the difficulty curve.

Yeah, I don’t think you can talk to him about the notes if you destroyed the adra - only if you kept it in one peace, in which case chief tries to confiscate the notes nd hide them. I agree that in this particular quest the “drama” seems a bit artificial.

It should trigger of you enter your ship after Magran’s Teeth.

Don’t know much about gaming politics - is it a new turn for Obsidian? They worked with publishers before. Or is that entirely different kind of a deal (the previous ones being one game contracts, while here they will be subjects of Microsofts will?).

There is so much optional content that somewhere above level 10 you will start running into quests below your level, and challenge goes down. Scaling doesn't quite fix things. Expansions and the megaboss are great. I doubt it will get much better than that, unless they seriosuly rebalance XP distribution, though I doubt they would aim it at completionists. There is also a mod, which aparently makes things harder (didn't try it myself just yet).

Came here after RPS report about Kodaku report. Having a publisher support comes with a cash to support a bigger project. But man, major publishers so rarely make actual games nowadays, unless it's Sony exclusive. Still we won't get game on scale of Fallout: New Vegas with crowdfunding.

haha! Good one. Not really a GoT fan. I gave up halfway through the first episode, when mentioned character was stripped naked by her brother with a comment: "Oh my, how have you grown up." More titties within 15 minutes of the show than I had a patience to handle. I know, it gets better later on.

I dunno. Make a roll with a disadvantage.