Wormerine

Nah, I am afraid I just can’t help myself from not finishing games I am starting if they have story. I have been slowly slogging through DA:I for probably over a year. I attempted to give up on it once, but it found it’s way back to my disk in the name of completion.

Yeah, I forgot about that one. I quite liked spending more time with characters early on, but later parts did feel like padding though. Still, considering that they stretched 4 hours long intro into a 40 hours long game, they did it pretty smoothly. They completely lost me at the end, though. But jetpacking and shooting folks is suppose to by satisfying at least on a very basic level, no? Maybe I did a mistake by picking two handed melee fighter as my Inquisitor, but combat felt really bad and unresponsive in DA3.

Ah also picked up Kena: Bridge of Spirits. It is not as pretty as I expected, but I have been enjoying it so far. Reminds me of a kind of a game Ubisoft would put out in the good old days before AssCreed - just a charming, well crafted third person adventure.

Just to me up to date for Dragon Age4, I playthrough through of Dragon Age: Inquisition - did main campaign with minimal amount of open world, and completely it's three DLCs. What an absolute ****show. Someone here told me a way back that the game gets better after Hinterlands. That's really strange to me, as nothing really changes, beside a change in scenery, story missions getting worse and worse, and swaping small keep, into large, overly spread out and frustrating to navigate keep. I didn't like the main campaign. The opening hours were junky, but I liked set up for an inquisition, Demonic threat seemed interested and main villain peaked my interest (never played DLCs for DA2, so he was new to me). In true Dragon Age fashion, Inquisition has interesting world and teases interesting directions but chooses to ignore every interesting thread it could pull and went for a boring, generic story, with a bland baddy who.... what was he trying to do? Now when I think of it, I don't think I even know. Demons are just another darkspawns, and in spite of hinting at Inquisition's tricky political situation the player never gets engaged with it. Easily the most interesting mission was in the WInter Palance, but the potential of the concept was killed by tying it back to Coryphius, rather than being an intrigue of its own. Combat was tedius, main missions undercooked, open world bland and repetitive, it was nice to see returning faces but their inclusion brought nothing of value beside a shot of nostalgia. I thought companions were decent, though having to chase them around the keep, and getting teleported around with every cutscene really soured the experience for me. Stories written for the war table were more interesting than anything in the actual game. I wish I had one of my advisors' job. DLCs were fine. Open world area had at least context to it. Deep Roads dive I could do without, but what can one do with that terrible combat. Trasspaser is easily best part of the title, but keeping the only really compelling character in the game as a teaser for the sequel just feels hurtful after so many hours of absolute ****e. If all of the game was Trasspaser I would be much happier. I need to check Andromeda and Anthem at some point, as I can't just imagine things getting worse that this.

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 😉