Wormerine

Hi folks, long time no see. During the Christmas break I watched "Foundation" on Apple TV+, and while I had mixed feelings about the show there were couple interesting enough threads for me to start digging about stories it was based on. Aside from learning how poor of an adaptiation the show was, I came across the concept of "Sociopolitical fiction": Which made me think about Pillars of Eternity, which focus on politics, social structures, religion and it's impact on populace make me think that at the heart Pillars of Eternity tries to be Sociopolitical Fiction. In both games, the most player can do is tip scales in favour of one of local economical and political structures. Personally, In PoE1&2 the ususal hero heroics always rang fales to me - gaining power and becoming legendary hero capable of slaughtering endless masses of enemies, felt like "because it is a game" feature, rather than part of the narrative and themes. Especially in PoE2, where the games tries hard to elevate the player as a dragon slayer, herald of Berath, a legendary hero everyone relies on help - it feels hollow, as in the narratively we seem powerless to do anything about the ongoing conflicts. It seems to me that PoE1&2 are more interested in its nations and ideologies, than our adventures. They seem to me like Sociopolitical Structures, stuck using hero's journey tropes they inherited from Baldur's Gate series. Would you agree? If so, do you see a solution? In unlikely case PoE3 were created, do you think it is possible to avoid this inherent conflict? Or would the series either need to change their narrative focus, to better support a group of adventurers gameplay, or would the gameplay need to take some drastic changes to better reflect game's narrative interests?

Yes, as far as I know.

Did you do something specific? For one or two days now, I am asked to verify my email everytime I try to log in - be it on my PC, phone or tablet (Firefox, firefox, chrome). edit. Couple hours later me: it didn’t ask me this time so all good?

Considering how Dark Allience turned out, we might have not lost anything worthwhile. Difficult to say what and why, without knowing anything about the projects.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/dungeons-dragons-owners-wizards-of-the-coast-have-cancelled-5-unannounced-projects Wizards of the Coast cancelled 5 unannounced project.

Finally wrapped up the playthrough. Loved the game with only few caveats - having to run to every NPCs during every story beat to not miss something important has become tiresome after a while, especially in act3. And I found the whodunnit reveal rather awkward. I don't know, but it just didn't land for me like the rest of the game. Still I wasn't also a fan of having to decide what to paint on the mural one scene at a time. Just feels irresponsible to make such decisions before having a full picture of the town's history. But I am willing to attribute it to Magda's inexperience.

Yeah, character creator has been heavily criticised for on Larian’s forum for reason you mentioned and others. In recent PfH devs were gushing how far they came with their character creator UI, and I sincerely hope they are talking about version we haven’t seen yet, and the one we have since Early Access dropped has been underwhelming and clunky. At the very least, different body types should be coming in 1.0 - recent Trailer shows player character with a beefy bod.

https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2022-fortnite-massive-ue5-update-tech-analysis

I have managed to finish my two ongoing big games before Holiday break. Spider-man. Yeah, fun, open world time waster. It's one of those games I would be rather critical of when talking about it, but I did enjoy playing through it. Will no doubt pick up the standalone expansion for a right price. It does swinging, punching and open world activities well and not a lot more. After finishing my playthrough I was left with two achievements - completing game plus and hardest difficulty unlockable after beating the game. I didn't have enough swinging so I decied I might as well do that. I must say it soured me quite a bit on the game. Hardest difficulty was hardly noticable change and game plus hold no surprise, unlike Arkham games where enemy encounters get remixed. And rushing through the story made me realise how little I enjoyed playthrough through the actual campaign. Story is decent, but those are mostly cutscenes inbetween openworld travel. "Dungeons" are few and they are brief. Non-spiderman moments are just not fun. Good thing there is option to skip puzzles. Still, I did surprising amount of side content all over again. Swinging and punching is still fun. Persona5 Royal - easily my favourite jRPG to date. Every complain I have about jRPGs just doesn't apply here. No weird spikes in difficulty, force grind, boring combat. You are over leveled? Fine you don't have to do combat. Pacing was great - any individual part of the game would quickly loose me, but with how they were intertwined kept me going. A tiny criticism - I wasn't a fun of extra dungeon at the end. I wouldn't mind it on its own, but it comes right at the end of the game, interrupting an epilogue of the main story and it really feels stitched on. And it must be said - as far as Waifu's go, Persona5 selection was rather excellent.

Fellow GOG I presume. If I remember correctly from PoE2 days, GOG patches tend to be bigger - something about inability to download modifications for files, and a lot of content needs to be re downloaded and replaced entirely. I hope they will manage to clean BG3 a lot in those months left. I has a lot of potential, but is also so very messy. Played for a bit and am a bit disappointed with current implementation of reactions - mainly because it applies to enemy selected skills. As a feature it works well - allowing for both control and automation. But at least for now reactions that don’t consume per rest resource are kept as they were, and I am not sure, if it is intended to stay that way, or just a transition phase.

Last patch for Baldur's Gate3 before it's August scheduled release has dropped. It comes with a Paladin class, revamp of reaction system, which seems to allow both to enable window popus (like in Solasta) or more controlled automation (smite on crit was a thing shown). Eder was announced as Minsc (Matt Mercer is voicing Minsc, and the boy seems to be capable of anything). Ah, and level5. Finally.

I will actually disagree with that, though it depends what one wants from a MP experience. If one just wants to hang out with buddies while playing a game, then really any functional MP mode will do. For me multiplayer games that work the best requires other humans input or response. That why I thought D:OS1&2 work much better in coop - as there is a lot of stuff you can do in those games, but without a coop player to do it to, or respond to what you are doing the experience felt rather hollow.

You don’t HAVE to play Left4Dead in coop either. That’s exaggerated comparison of course, and they made big strides since D:OS1 to provide better singleplayer experience. Obviously my issue isn’t that coop exists, it that it impacts negatively my singleplayer experience. Not something that I mind in itself in Divinity series, Larian be Larian and that is fine, but their games just don’t do well what Obsidian is doing well.

This is still just a rumory rumor, but if that is what happened, then I am fully supporting the reboot. Man, would I be disappointed if Avowed turned out to be another weird also-coop game.

Personal highlights from the show: Returnal coming to PC. Nothing new, but it's been one of the PS exclusives that looked the most compelling to me (ourside Bloodborne/Demon Souls). Hades2 - I have similar reservations I had when Hades1 was announced. A usually creative studio doing something generic - this time it is studios first sequel. That said, while Hades1 was good, it also was pretty underdeveloped in its individual aspects. Core rogue lite formula was very repetitive. I feel there is enough of space to expand for both in gameplay and its unique storytelling that doing a sequel could be a creativelly compelling project. Continuing a trend of being excited for a game best on the studio making it:" from creators of Celeste", is good enough for me. Baldur's Gate3 is slated for August 2023. Still have very mixed feelings about it, but the trailer looks mostly good. It seems Minsc is not being treated as playable Origin anymore, but that bring the question - was he removed as a companion all together. Are there no origin companions? If the latter then it is a great news. It is also possible that he and Jaheira will be "camp followers" - so NPC that hang around your camp but don't go out adventuring with you. There is a German article on the topic, if you know German. Didn't Ken Levine leave Bioshock to do something different? Oh well, Judas looks very Bioshocky. First one was a good time, hopefully this one will be even better

[sarcasm]Can't wait what brilliant humor Larian will bring to Boo, and to Minsc to join the other companions in BG3 explaining one after another why/why not they don't want to have sex with my PC[/sarcasm]

Looking at Protocol's reviews, though, I get an impression it is closer to a QTE then a game system - from what I understand it requires a specific sequence of inputs, rather then having specific moves that work as a combo in specific order.

Never particularly cared for story in any Blizz game (though I admit SC1 came the closest) so to each their own. That said the quote really puzzles me though. I though those accusations of SC2 campaign being lesser in content then the original because of the race split ended once a WoL released with a more robust campaign then anything found in the original SC.

Midnight Suns reviews seem to be all over the place. RPS really liked it, even giving it "RPS Bestest of the Best" badge which genuilly surprising considering what I have seen before. Skillup having been more mixed, recommending the game for it's combat, but pointing to poor performance, and heavily criticising the social base elements ACG jave been overall rather negative It turns out that the game even has cosmetic microtransactions, if the game didn't look like a questionable offering already. In power of Marvel IP we trust I suppose.

Aww, I still play SC2 every once in a while. Story was poor, but I really liked campaigns otherwise.

Finished act2 precisely same as the above. I would be curious to see how the accusations are spread - I feel most people will gravitate toward the same "lesser evils". On a plus side, I finally succeeded in one speach check. Baby steps. I must say I got really excited when duke's herald appeared and L'Homme Armé started playing. Just

That's a good way of putting it. The sudden deadline really messed up my plans, and forced me to make a desperate call.

I am trying to find flowers to make medicine for brother Aedoc. I talked to Gertrude about it, and she told me to find some in the forest, but all prompts that pop up are regarding white flower I picked up night before. I looked up a walkthrough and it seems like something must be off. Couple points: 1) I didn't get quest from sister Illuminata to get to the library - I discovered the secret entrance in actI and used it to sneak it unprompted 2) I didn't talk to system Getrude "directly" - a blind sister took me to her and we examined jars as part of another quest. After that was done, I was allowed to asked her about herbs for Aedoc. I can't initiate conversation with her now, and just generic bark popup up. 3) The journal hasn't updated and still tells me to talk to sister Getrude. Please, getting young killed and briefly prolonging life of erderly seems to me by things so far.