Wormerine

So Avowed. First impressions are mixed. Gameplay is indeed pretty good, and I like exploration so far. Writing has me increasingly worried. Conversation trees seem to be well below Obsidian's standard - there is a rather blatant "NPC has same response recorded for all of the choices offered to you", and character's just don't feel right so far. They speak casually, which is at odds with Avowed still being just of a lore whore as PoEs were. I also find NPCs to speak more to the player than a character. Multiple NPCs keep talking to the Envoy of Aedyr things they probably should keep to themselves. In first instance I thought it might be characterisation, but it keeps happening, so it seems like it's more of an exposition dump for the player, rather than a believable in-world interaction. Edit. So pwetty though

It's not the game we deserve, it's the game we need.

Also what is fashionable and what isn't is in constant flux - that's why chasing trends with a multiyear production cycle is dangerous in itself. I remember when it was difficult to come by a game that offered any challenge to the player. Console manufacturers were aiming at "casual audience" (aka. newcomers) and titles were designed to not dare to challenge your progress. Than stuff like Demon/Dark Souls and Super Meat Boy came out, and it turns out there was a sizable audience hungry for such titles, and the taste for it spread. I remember about 10 years ago, when IO was saying how tricky audience testing was for Hitman2016 - as players were so used to be lead by the hand, that most didn't know how to engage with systemic sandbox. I think a recent success of Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate3 and now KC:D2 show that general audience is more open to a more player driven experiences. Now of course, those are three rather good games, so it is no easy way to success. But I think those three studios prove a value of specialized, slowly developing studios. Very much different mindset than AAA's pick the marketable thing to do, buy/make/hire a studio with no experience to make it, and fire everyone when it underperforms.

To be fair, by most AAA publishers standards, 2 million would likely be considered a disappointment. Good on your Czech mates and I hope they will continue delivering bangers. Looking forward to adding my copy to the 2 million once it releases on GOG.

I agree about the Islands - I would much prefer fewer, but chunkier locations. DLCs are a great example of how much more effective content can be if it's more substantial. I suspect it is a result of amount of story they packed into Deadfire - less locations means less side plots - and between three factions, Eothas path, and side content there is a lot of ground too cover. No, I don't think there was any change to the ship - however, depending on what flag you fly, ships will treat you differently. If you use default Watcher flag, you will be left along by most ships but pirates, unless you piss a faction off. If you switch the flag for pirate one, though, for Fort Deadlight quest and leave it like that, more ships will see you as the enemy.

According to Mort, though, the hud is very scalable and customisable - how far one can remove it without impacting actual gamey, though, we will see.

At the moment I don't think much as I am yet to play either. I just have seen a lot of K:CD2 being mentioned under various Avowed videos. Any impression I have at the moment is 3rd party accounts. Will be diving into Avowed next week, and will probably finally start KC:D1 sometime after that.

I don't think I have seen an overwhelmingly positive review for Avowed. From what I have seen people invested in Eora, found a lot to enjoy in Avowed, while people not invested in the universe mostly found it underwhelming. So it seemed Avowed might have missed the marked in trying to bring in new audience, while the existing audience would likely prefer PoE3 to begin with. Eitherway, it seems that Obsidian is continuing playing it safe - which is disappointing. I was hoping that lesser player agency came with some unique upsides, and so far it doesn't seem to be the case. While Outer Worlds benefited from Bethesda creating a lot of goodwill for it with Fallout76, it seems K:CD2 created the opposite for Avowed. Which is a shame, A detailed, hardcore medieval adventure is kinda what first person PoE adaptation should be IMO. Fantastical powerfantasy, I think runs against the IP's nature. Alas Obsidian continues to pursue mainstream appeal with Outer Worlds and it seems, Avowed, producing simpler friction-free experiences. Still, looking forward to it. Based on what I have heard I should enjoy the game well enough.

Huh. Well done Obsidian.

Still not as bad as the "restored planet".

Solasta2 will have a playable demo this Steamfest on February 24th: It seems that just like with Solasta1 it will be a selfcontained, standalone adventures showcasing what we can expect in the final game. I am wondering, however, what purpose this demo serves. In Solasta1 it was part of crowdfunding campaign. I don't believe devs mentioned reaching for crowdfunding this time around, and I though S2 was to release in Early Access at some point instead. Still, creating a demo sounds like an odd allocation of resources in this case, unless it is something they just do as part of the development process.

Interesting.... Well we know:

Oh, I didn't know that you get discount on pre-order if you have Gamepass. Still, I am happy to wait those couple extra days. I don't think I will struggle avoiding spoilers. I will save those $25 to get the game later, on a proper platform once it gets discounted later down the line (assuming of course, that I want to play it ever again... finger's crossed). You might have noticed that Critical Role joined Mercer in the sequel - companions are mostly voiced by CR cast, and they got some other major roles (Eothas, narrator, Imps). It was definitely a marketing thing as well, though it didn't seem to help them much considering how much Deadfire underperformed initially. Eh, Obsidian has always drawn heavily from P&P, and both PoEs used story adventure sequences to expand scenarios that the game could support. Personally, I still think the ones from White March are the most interesting ones, but Deadfire is good. Neketaka is massive - it is a Hub you will be visiting and revisiting throughout the game, so my advice is to not spend too much time there are any given time. Do a major quest or two if you feel like it, gather quests and bounties and sail out. You can explore districts and all that they have to offer at your leisure, no need to try to complete it all in one go. While initially jarring I think party of 5 is a good choice. You still have a lot of flexibility in how you build your party, and I didn't feel loosing the 6th member impacted negatively my enjoyment of the game. As someone who micromanages my parties, 5 was a very good sweet spot where everyone is actively working on accomplishing something.

Well, because it didn't sell well 😂. Though why a game wouldn't sell well is sometimes difficult to understand, and I would advice against using personal preferences as a reason why other people didn't buy the game. I don't know Veilguards cast enough to parse if there is any validity to its critique (from what I understand romances in Veilguard are rather underdeveloped to begin with). My personal interesting in Veilguard: 1) For me Dragon Age as an IP is not a very strong one. I didn't love a single title in the franchise, and as such I am not particularly invested in seeing the story through. I was mixed on Origins, and leaning toward negative for both sequels. 2) Bioware doesn't inspire confidence in me. The last game I truly enjoyed from them was Mass Effect2. They need to really deliver for me to pay more than a handful of bucks for their title. 3) Marketing for Veilguard didn't make be believe I would find the game enjoyable. I didn't like the tone of the trailers, and gameplay footage looked dull. 4) The reviewers whose opinion on Veilguard I was looking for, found it rather underwhelming. The writing examples they have showed made their critique seem legitimate.

You make it sound like "What if like Baldur's Gate3, but the systemic design actually manages to provide payoffs". Dang, can't wait to finally jump into KCD1&2. Avowed first though.

"That was about as useful as a bump on the pickle". I quite like that Eora is populated by a wider range of accents. Dyrwoodians (and Readcerian's) using American accents felt appropriate considering certain similarities between once real life colony of a distant world power. While it is no PoE1 cast, I have warmed up to PoE2 companions, especially after reputation was tweaked (and even more so in my recent playthrough, where I slowed down reputation gain even further - though it did prohibit a few inter-party banter to trigger) so they won't all try to pounce on my poor Watcher as soon as they join the party.

Yeah, honestly, during my first playthrough I was rather lukewarm on PoE1 - I liked it, but thought story was meandering. But, that final reveal ties things up so nicely, I ended up immediately starting 2nd playthrough, doing a very compressed playthrough reading every single ingame book I could find and backed the sequel without the hesitation. I just hope Avowed will be on the level.

Nah, they know very well what's what. They just WANT to do live services as hooking players through rewards systems is more reliable than having to make a good game people like.

Game Awards Best Fighting game winner of 2022, and Game Awards Best Fighting game nominee of 2024 (huh?), Multiversus is shutting down in May. It will be playable offline for those who download it, but it will not be downloadable anymore. https://www.polygon.com/gaming/517406/multiversus-canceled-shut-down-date

Pre-Avowed playthrough of Deadfire completed. Used some light mods, mandatory Community Patch, plus XP rebalance, which worked pretty well. I think this is a playthrough I enjoyed the most. Small narrative additions and DLCs, I think make Deadfire much stronger narratively, and enough time has passed for me to be able to assess it with a fresher pair of eyes.

Eh, honestly, Sapkowski is just a Polish guy, who doesn't care much for videogames. He has a formal, direct way of speaking which comes out as critical or negative when translating into English. There are bitter undertones to the English article, that I don't sense at all when reading the original. All he says about games and CDPR is very respectful, and praises them multiple times but he just doesn't throw empty praise the way english speakers would do. He didn't play Witcher games, and is familiar with "graphic materials" only - which could be screenshots, or trailers or snippets of the game. What he does though is draw a clear line between his work, and CDPR's adaptation. He isn't critical of their work, he just considers it to be its own thing. A new work based on his characters, not a continuation of it - and as someone who read all the books - he is absolutely right.

My google-fu tells me that it was a DLC on consoles, so it is possible you played a version without it. Apparently it was always part of PC KOTOR (looking at screenshot it looks familiar, but my memory if the game is fuzzy by now).

GOG, is my prefer launcher, and I quite happy they added Galaxy - I find downloading and updating games through it easier, and I also manage other storefronts through it. But yes, unfortunately, GOG doesn't secure enough new releases for me to buy from the regularly. Even with smaller titles they tend to get them slower, and they usually don't announce what will add to their storefront and when. KC:D2 might be the first time I see GOG announce release ahead of time like that. So many times I bought game on Steam only for it to get GOG release later. And yeah, most publisher seem to avoid non-DRM releases - I was so disappointed when Hitman2016 released on GOG briefly (got pulled back due to backlash), but was still tied to online server. Yeah, me neither. It's installed on my PC, but waiting for its turn (with Avowed coming out it will probably still be some time before I get to it). I didn't think my PC could run it well when it first released, and while it's been on top of my "to play" games since I build a new rig I never got around to playing it. I think I am aging.