Hawke64

Same. Though, Obsidian has been using Unreal Engine for their latest games, except Pentiment, so it should not affect the future titles and cannot be enforceable for PoE and Tyranny (or at least I hope so). Also, I doubt that Microsoft would welcome the proposed installation fees, considering how Game Pass works. Regarding Cyberpunk 2077. Increasing the already high system requirements is not exactly a user-friendly thing to do and given the size, keeping backups is challenging. Well, downloading and installing it in the first place is challenging - at the moment the GOG version is 112GB and 28 pieces. Shouldn't have purchased, I suppose. Edit. For some reason, replies don't get submitted on the first attempt. Odd.

Replayed a part of Act 3 to see how much I could shorten the critical path. Not too much, there is quite a lot of railroading in that particular quest. The quest for Orin's McGuffin, observations: Overall, frustrating. Could be worse, of course, but it is still less flexible and more buggy than expected.

GOG and a firewall solve it. You get to keep whatever version you are happy with and the developers/publishers can't do anything about it. (Stares disapprovingly at the PoEII "Ultimate" update). Speaking of, do I remember correctly that in some version of Morrowind you could manually enter the dialogue topics? Story-wise, reached the Ashlanders' village. Caius Cosades told me to try to pass as Nerevarine and seemed like a fine idea. OOC, I like that the PC is not actually the Chosen One, but the one selected by the emperor because he could play the role of the Chosen One. --- Tried Unavowed, a point-and-click adventure game. It was possible to enter the PC's name manually, and the NPC asked me not to suggest him to fornicate with himself (given the situation, it was the only answer coming to mind). After several attempts the PC was named "Demon".

TESIII: Morrowind Merchants equip the items bought. The Fighters Guild beds are assassin-proof. I fell through the floor in Vived several times. Now I remember the issue with the Cliff Racers.

https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat-offices-closed-pricing-change From Owlcat on the Unity situation in general: https://steamcommunity.com/app/2186680/discussions/0/6792046983676257130/?tscn=1694763551#c6792046983676726719

Probably, but he was a monk. Accidentally solved a murder case, joined the Great House of Hlaalu, and got the full Dark Brotherhood armour set when an assassin got stuck in the bed I was using. The set was 3 times better than the one I had.

Some of the developers are going to move to other engines, it seems. Curious about Rogue Trader and Death Trash, though. Both are close to release and switching now could be problematic. Also, curious how it is going to work with GDPR and GOG purchases where the customers are more likely to cut any Internet access if the game is single-player only. https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/game-devs-announce-plans-to-drop-unity-urge-players-to-protest-new-per-install-fees Edit. Random websites (several) say Riccitiello has sold 2,000 shares of the company during the past week, a total of 50,610 shares over the past year, and purchased none. Not sure if it is related.

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. Less annoying than I remember them. This amount of dialogue and explicit and precise directions, instead of quest markers, seem to be rare in the AAA titles.

TESIII: Morrowind. Spent about an hour wandering Dwemer ruins, because I missed a "staircase" (a fallen column). Also got to level 2 and found some decent weapons. There was a scanned (the pages were visibly folded) guide in the game's root folder, which introduction spoiled one of the major plot twists.

They reminded me how much I liked Ukaizo - 1 boss battle, 1 short faction battle only and the resolution of the main story. Concise and elegant.

Just in case, if you have summons or wild-shape active, NPCs might react slightly negatively, and in the Shadow-Cursed Lands it might get really unpleasant.

TESIII: Morrowind. Reached Balmora. Was very impressed by the ability to ask for directions and actually get precise instructions.

1. Very impressive tactics and it is poetic; 2. There is non-lethal damage. In most cases the game treats it the same as lethal and it also breaks some quests, but there is also 1 (one) side quest where it works as intended. Edit. For melee only.

The default GOG version (GOTY, v.2.0.0.7). It did not require any additional configuration (as far as I remember - it says that I installed it on 2022/05/03) and runs reasonably well on Windows 10 (the window outlines appear if I switch between applications, disappears if I switch between resolutions).

TESIII: Morrowind. Watched a wizard experiencing falling damage, explored slavers' cave, talked to the locals. Also realised that I do not remember how to rest, fast travel, or sort the inventory by weight or whether it was possible at all. Still, I like the dialogue system with random NPCs (the new information becomes available to ask to elaborate) and the consistency of the replies (so I do not have to parse them only to gain the same information). While it is not what I would want from a party-based CRPG, it works well with the sandbox design of TES. The story so far - I was told to go to Balmora and find Caius Casades.

I see. Thank you for the information. Thought some customisation was added for the portraits.

The wildshape looks great. Why the companions' portraits are different?

Larian's D&D game. Act 3 start Act 3, Dark Urge and Orin Act 3, Gortash Act 3, ending

Finished the second playthrough as the Dark Urge. Slightly broke the game in the process (Act 3 and end-game spoilers)*. Most importantly, discovered that 1. Grub the cat can die; 2. In order to save him, a story companion (not a hireling) must remain in the camp during Act 3 and Grub's human (a red-haired child with heterochromia) must be given food or gold upon starting Act 3. The human is unlikely to be avoided on the first playthrough, considering the location. * About the other unavoidable combat sequence (between Act 2 and Act 3):

The hirelings might be interesting - level-appropriate backgrounds and no inclination to bother the PC (also more variety of classes and races). Though, I'd like them having 1-2 lines of dialogue (as is, they are corpses lore-wise). With the Origin companions, I think they calm down and focus on their own quests after Act 1.

Same, but they might have wanted to show a short trailer with functional gameplay, which is easier to do with combat rather than dialogues.

It's one of the unmarked "romance" options, as far as I know. ("Do you see me differently now?", if I'm not mistaken). I hope they will be more transparent in the Definitive Edition (either rewriting to "Hey, wanna bang?" or "You look like a swell lass/lad/person" or just adding the [flirt] tag). Edit. The difference between the writers' intentions* and the player's expectations** might lead to rather uncomfortable experiences and situations, not counting the bugs (scene triggers not registering correctly). @Bartimaeus Sorry. I think the only other "romance" scene that might be unpleasant and is easy to encounter happens in Act 3. Though, I haven't used Long Rests in Act 1 much and these scenes are mostly there. * ("obviously, the PC would ask if Lae'zel is interested in casual sex with them right after meeting her") ** (going through the neutral-looking dialogue options one by one to get the general idea about the companion)

Some events in Act 3 do lack reactivity (like throwing a boss into the chasm only for it to climb back to die in the post-battle cut-scene), though I am unsure if "not implemented" content counts as "cut". It didn't have to be a one "epic" cut-scene. Slides would be sufficient and relatively easy to do (1 already drawn concept art or screenshot + 1-2 sentences). Though, getting the quest flags to be set correctly might be not so easy. I suppose, the Definitive Edition will fix most of the issues that are not considered "features" and it is nice that the developers are listening to the feedback. Still, would have preferred a more finished game after 3 years of EA. (Hard to balance the negativity).

I mostly agree. Considering that time is frozen until you reach a location (as a piece of the map) and an invisible timer starts ticking when you do, these locations could have been separated into smaller and more manageable maps, thus providing the feeling of actual travel. The sense of direction is kind of present in the journal (which I read on the second playthrough): need to find a healer > there might be one in the settlement > the locals said he was kidnapped > need to save the healer > need to kill the goblin leaders > need to travel to the Spoiler-rise Tower. In Act 2 it's mostly following a certain NPC's orders and another NPC's in Act 3 + "find allies" (whom you won't need anyway). But, as you said, if you follow this logical path without exploring significantly more (after you've been told that the best healer there cannot help you, because your tadpole is "special", so in-character you know that it is useless), you will be under-levelled and under-equipped. To be fair, Larian's D&D game offers quite a lot of environmental interactivity (like TES - not much consequences unless really specific and intentional*, but when it works, it kind of breaks the intended path), allows to skip a lot of content should one want to do so, which is very rare, thus admirable, and the PC can actually jump, which even rarer in CRPGs (probably, because you usually don't need to, but still). On the other hand, considering how real-time everything is, the turn-based combat and the lack day/night cycle and NPC routine are very noticeable. *Could have been done as dialogue options - "[Str 18] Do you want to build a tower of boxes and jump over the wall?" or "[Wis 18] Do you want to put a bucket on the merchant's head?". I think, The Age of Decadence did it. You indeed can and it is not exactly challenging to do, though the "romance" probably should be in quotation marks.