Wormerine

What I am the most curious about now, is how Pathfinder:WotR will do. Crowdfunding wise it did far better then P:K, with over 2x money, and almost 2x backers. But how well will it sell after release? Did most players interested in it, pitch into crowdfunding, and will not be there to buy it once the game is complete? In both PoE and Pathf I moved from post release purchase in initial game, to a backer for the sequel. My money won't be there for them after they burn through the budget, just as it was the case with Deadfire.

How? Unless, we skip/don't do conversation. A single "conversation cleaning" in a camp would take me over an hour. ME takes an advantage of its presentation, while I found it in DA to be detrimental - I would rather imagine character interacting, then see puppets awkwardly stare at each other, with screen fade to black whenever they don't have a proper animation for an action. After Battle of Ostigar there is little to discover - things we do learn aren't terribly interesting. KOTOR had a great revelation which turn story on its head, just as things started to become dull and repetitive. ME2 has revelations about collectors, important story beats about characters, and overall compelling suicide mission. DA is just doing a checklist before we can wrap things up, fighting a vague and impersonal enemy, whose dargerous nature is never explored within game (corruption). Also characters origin is a big focus of DA (even to the point of being in title) and is ompletely abandoned after Battle of O - if someone brings up who you are, it is to explain why it doesn't matter. This and morally difficult nature of a Warden is never properly explored after the introduction. I am yet to play Inquisition, but I did find DA2 to be initially more compelling. It was a bit too clear on how tight deadline it was made, and I found it confused when it comes to storytelling.

It’s too shallow for its length, and looses steam after the Battle of Ostagar. It should have been a compact 20-30 hours adventure. It’s not like they have a story to tell.

Did you equip items?

I am quite shocked by overwhelming popularity of Alpha Protocol. It's a curious game, but broken in so many aspects I wouldn't even consider it. New Vegas easily for me. Many of Obsidian games are interesting but held back by something. New Vegas is simply great.

Yet to watch it, but knowing his critiques it’s gonna be good. Edit: manages to give voice to many problems I wasn’t able to properly articulate.

UK seems to be treating things rather lightly so far. Whenever, this approach is reasonable or not, I don't know. I am really concerned by how difficult it is to get hand soap... does that mean that people don't wash their hands on regular basis, or do they stockpile it on mass hoping to make the profit by reselling it? Facebook marketplace is full of toilet paper with inflated prices. EDIT. Oh, as a side note, one can get a free 30days long access to Digital Concerthall of Berlin Phil... in case on has a decent sound system and feels like listening to the one of the top ensambles in the world. https://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/en/titelgeschichten/20192020/digital-concert-hall/?fbclid=IwAR2Pts8yxLYn6TARVrKZrskhGBPH2FMxcx04cILDsI-h_E9XM8rDOH2JEfQ

And, not an Epic exclusive. I am glad Sony is starting to port titles over to PC.

So WotR gathered over 2x as much money as P:K, and had almost 2x as many backers. I suppose that means people like P:K. I wonder how it will translate into sales, and if it will be Deadfire situation: people who liked the game moved from post-release launch purchase, to backer resulting in, overall, worse sales.

I know, I was told so, and that lead me abandoning the playthrough, as I didn't have much fun.

Sure, but it was also sacrificed for the sake of D:OS.

Or Stevenage.

As to threads title, I have been a bit provocative with some of the opinion, even if they are not untrue. I don't love VtM as much as other people, though big part of it is the setting. Vampire's a not my thing, and first time I played it I bounced of it pretty hard because of it. Beside that, I think it's a pretty great RPG. What I am not thrilled about, is that a lot of reactivity and replayibility comes from picking various vampire clans - while impressive how the game accomodates even more unusual vampires, it does feel to me like you pick an experience at the start of the game, rather then crafting your character as you go, and having the world react to me. There just some types of reactivity which I admire, but don't find engaging. This is one, another example are two 2nd chapters in Witcher2. It's defenitely good, just didn't like it, like Fallout1&2 or Arcanum. A lot of it is personal taste.

[shrug] Gimme OW2, add depth to character development, and add systemic depth and interactivity Tim Cain has been so good at, and we have a great little RPG series.

Sounds a bit like Deadfire's ship combat to me. EDIT: An optional feature one could sink a lot of money into, and not be any fun in the end.

I just don't think The Outer World was very interesting. I think it has potential, but right now it's shinier and less developed Fallout: New Vegas, and I would see no need to ever return to, if not for the DLC. Fallout 1&2 are games to which I return every few years and can have a fresh playthrough and discover new things. Really? I clocked in 45 hours and can't recall a single interesting character or story bit. Lack of any coherent story development was what made my leave it. There a mildly funny bit every once in a while, but that's about it.

Oh, I am also playing for the first time Castelvania: Symphony of the Night on my iPad with DualShock. It is shockingly playable to this day, and still feels better to play then a host of 2d Metroidvanias I have played.

Yup.

Dishonored 2. I am currently using laptop, so upgrade would probably mean building new PC.

Thanks! I suspected you meant a Witcher3. Another honest question: what did you like about leveling system? I thought I did more harm, then good. I thought it add little to no customization, and lead to major gameplay issues - like being over-leveled for all content past initial area. OW was fine, though ages behind New Vegas and Troika games system and design wise.

Oh yeah. I have been watching StarTrek for the first time (TNG to be exact) for the last couple months, and Stellaris got reinstalled for that very reason.

I found it worthy of investigation, so created account on Larian's forum and made a thread about it. I received an interesting response from one of the users:

Yeah, but BG3 won't be telling a great story. What IE games did, and what Larian is doing are completely different things. The more you define the character, the less space you give to the player: Have full close up, animation, voiceacting - and all is left for the players is to occasionally decide what decision the character will do. Have a written, silent protagonist, with closeup - and players can somewhat decide what the intention of their character might be when they pick a given line. What Larian is doing is a pretty much blank slate, giving players tools and allowing them to play in any way they want. I do find it odd, that they invested in close-ups for BG3, while still keeping a vaguenes of D:OS2 Is it not in spirit of DnD? Do you get a pre-written lines to choose from when you play Table-Top DnD? BG3 gives you options, but what is said, and how it is said is to be defined by you, the player. As to how it is written - Past tense etc. I do agree. Tis odd. I didn't pay to it much attention. What they did in D:OS2 was much more intuitive.

Won't it, though, heavily devalue whatever skill is responsible for "Initiation"? Sure, alpha strike is nice, but after that it becomes irrelevant. They will have to boost it's usefulness in another way.