Wormerine

Mimimi's project Süßkartoffel has been revealed. Looks very much like their previous titles, though according to earlier interviews and gameplay video it will be more open, than their previous titles:

In case you weren't sceptical of Suicide Squad before, it will have a Battlepass https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/leaked-screenshot-shows-suicide-squad-kill-the-justice-league-has-a-battle-pass

Continuing: I am thinking about companions in PoE1 vs PoE2. In PoE1 personal quest of each companion seems to be revolving around larger picture surrounding them. Each of the stories is personal to each companion by they tie to something larger. Most of companion stories could only exist within Eora - you can't have Sagani, without the Wheel and Nasitaaq culture, you can't have Eder/Durance without Saint's War. PoE2 makes companion's "vision quests" purely personal, but also pretty generic. It's mostly about old lovers, old mentors, standing out (or patchiing lore holes depending how you look at Pallegina) - most of those vision quests could be easily transplanted into a different generic fantasy universe. I think I liked Takehu and Xoti quests the most as they tie closer to the game's world than others characters. Those two feel the most like they have been shaped by their surroundings, rather than just being characters who exist in that universe.

Unless one is stuck playing on PotD, and can't switch to lower difficulty. I am pretty sure there is a mod or console command for that though.

It has been a while, but that sounds about right.

I get it though. I am fine with playing on lower difficulty myself, or skip intentionally very hard content (megabosses) but I find it unpleasant to have to lower the difficulty deep into the game. Game having major difficulty spikes is a very valid complain. What happens is that player is suddently forced to closely examined their build, their weapon upgrade, thier items - something they likely didn't have to worry about before.

I somewhat agree, except I would say that base game is not properly balanced. Base campaign still is really, really easy even on PotD. DLCs bring them back where they should be, however, the issue is that some players can play on harder difficulties and than run into a brick wall of difficulty with the DLCs. Personally, I found DLCs on veteran just right, and on upscale PotD quite challenging, so it was right what I would expect from those difficuties.

I really like that as a mechanic. I can opt to carry sprays for better protection, or take more risk if, for example, I catch an unlucky spear in the face while climbing.

Sure the system exists, but nothing is known or can be known of the existence or nature of its creator?

Is 2nd one worth playing? I was considering lately, but with all the claims of game's economy being rigged to sell lootboxes (though I believe they have been patched out, and economy adjusted) and reviews claiming it's a dull grind, I ended up postponint it for now.

I am theoretically a prime target - I used to be a Potter fan when I was younger. I must say, some of it looks very appealing. But so far, outside eyecandy, gameplay looks very dull and I am just wary of Warner Bros as publisher. I will wait till release and reviews drop before I even consider it.

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.