Tale

You never see her birth, you just see her as a baby running around. And the later interludes kind of make the timeline on that confusing. In hindsight, I'm guessing the ghost lady is the white dragon, which would further the connection if true.

My understanding, and it's left up in the air, so I'm not 100%, is It just sounds like a bunch of stuff they really should have been doing instead of 3/4th of what was going on in Chapters.

I hear it was supposed to also be some of her story for after Dreamfall, too. Somehow. Wasn't there a whole thing about how April was supposed to reunite Stark and Arcadia or am I misremembering that?

I felt the same way to be honest, but once you push past those initial missions it seems things become more reasonable, assuming you don't keep on being stuck with rookies because they always die, but I'm not playing ironman so... (and you don't accidentally activate that DLC and end up fighting overpowered cheating snakes with rookie gear) That said I don't particularly enjoy the amount of timers. Especially that Avatar timer (which is rather badly explained in the game, like most mechanics, really. Like, I still have no clue how they could possibly know how long I have nor do I have a clue as to what I can do about it. For all I know I already waited too long and my game's already over but I just don't know it) The three guys I lost to a timer weren't rookies. I don't know if I'll ever stop being bitter over that loss. I've had two missions so far that didn't have timers and I really liked them. So the only way I see myself continuing is if I mod the timers away. But, bitter over losing THREE SERGEANTS BECAUSE OF A TIMER, is not likely to be something I'll do immediately. Strikes me as a bit unfair that I'll get a mission with such a tight timer and have so many stun lancers and Vipers on the same map. The stun lancer knocked one of my guys unconcious, and that means I effectively lost two guys as one of my others dedicated themselves to carrying her. Note that these are the only two who evacced. Because my lead two characters got poisoned, and my soldier backing them up ended up walking through the poison cloud even though I picked the one movement that said he wouldn't. One of those two leads paniced and did the stupid thing of jumping all the way to the ground. I was happy to leave her, but then this is when I found the other two had their movement practically halved and got stuck behind. It seems pretty uncool to have a mission with no concealment, enemies that can knock you unconcious on one hit, other enemies that debuff movement, and still have a timer.

I got about two non-tutorial missions into XCOM 2 and I'm less than enthusiastic about continuing. The timers are probably the worst bit, but having most of the enemies be humans (with funny faces) doesn't do it any favors either. And just the all around atmosphere of the game. Edit: And three of my guys just got captured because they were poisoned and that seems to make you run slower. So they couldn't make the evac point in time. Fantastic.

Finished XCOM: Enemy Within. All but Operation Slingshot, sadly. That last mission! Was not hard. Because I cheesed it with mind control, gene mods, and that cool guided plasma rocket thing. Edit: I'm thinking about creating a name list for XCOM 2 with Obsidian forum members. Might even do a thread on it.

Book 5 of Dreamfall Chapters Book 1 - 4 were dissapointments occasionally interrupted by sincere moments reminding me why I loved the series. The intro to book 1, with Zoe in dreamtime, put me in tears. The rest of it nearly bored me to the same. But Book 5 was what it needed to be. What the franchise needed it to be or at least most of the way there. It'll tug your nostalgia until it hurts. I still feel April got shafted. She deserved another adventure we'll probably never get.

I lost my favorite soldier last night, my first Colonel, my last remaining assault. Yeah, it was another EXALT mission. Those things have been the bane of my existence. And I lost my best support in the assault the alien base mission. I've been stuck running 3 snipers for a while, since they never get injured or killed, while trying to train up rookies to an assault. My third Colonel was one of those snipers and my second Colonel is another heavy. The heavy is the one who cleaned up the mess that killed the assault, I like him. Thankfully I just got the Operation Progeny soldier as an assault and stuck her in the psi lab with both of the Colonels. Lets see what happens. I'm kind of concerned, though. I thought I'd stabilized the assault Colonel, but couldn't find it after the mission. Maybe because I failed it anyway. So I checked the memorial wall and sure enough, there she was, dead of major trauma. But the interesting thing was my first three deaths, the ones that died to a randomly exploding tank. The memorial wall says they all died to a Major using a Sniper Rifle. A certain Major that's now a Colonel. I have to keep my eye on him.

Being a Sony exclusive there is practically no chance. They published Everybody's Gone to the Rapture on PC, but it's the exception, not the norm. So there's a chance, but it's small enough to fall within the bounds of error.

More XCOM: Enemy Within, Ironman Normal. Much better this time around. I'm about as far as when I failed hard last time, though I held off doing EXALT. I haven't lost a single soldier yet! Very exciting, I know. Having succeeded at a satellite gambit and using the recommended overwatch crawl helped a bunch. Edit: My flawless streak is over. My first exalt mission, the one that was less than a day away from where I started up today, saw three soldiers die, including my operative. I was flawlessly kicking the mission's butt up until a tank spontaneously exploded WITH NO WARNING that they were using as cover. Thankfully they weren't my veterans. They had 3, 4, and 5 missions in their belts, where my true veterans had 17. Edit 2: I lost another two soldiers in another Exalt mission, this time to standard "getting shot." I lost a heavy (of which I have like 4 left) to lots of bad luck. He got shot up from the ground while taking cover near a rail, revived, hit with a rocket later that destroyed his cover, and then shot by a dude who barely showed up. And I lost my MEC Trooper because it was a vertical map and I couldn't get it up with the rest of the team without running through enemies. I tried skirmishing with it when I thought the mission was almost over, but it got torn up by Overwatch. Due to various injuries, I am forced to do my next mission with only 5 guys.

I lost my game of XCOM: Enemy Within on Normal so badly that I just want to get colorful. It all started when I got my first Exalt mission. I've barely got lasers, and not many at that, and there's all these swarms of guys who take 2-3 hits to kill. My sniper died and when I saw they were still coming, I evacced the rest out. Then I got to a mission with a mechtoid. May have blown up two of my veterans fighting that. Cars for cover turns out to be a terrible idea when you're using rocket launchers and MEC punches. Then a third died, I saw those little saucer things, Muton I already hate where there, so I evacced the remaining two. So now nations are panicing. I get a mission to stop the panic, which turns out to be like three saucers and a bunch of those zombie creating guys. Yeah, everyone died. My last one died to a surprise overwatch around a corner that I thought was clear because a civilian was just there safe and sound. Then a mission with more zombie thingies. They pop out of nowhere and kill one of my dudes in two attacks. My sniper grenades them, but dies to the new zombie. The remaining three I just let die. And that's all I could put up with.

https://twitter.com/ChrisAvellone/status/742211783134306304/photo/1 MCA is working on the new version of Prey. I wonder if this direction for the title started while both were under Obsidian.

Actually, it's M then shift. If you're used to moving by just clicking, doing shift then click does a whole other thing. Which is where the confusion set in. There was combat against something on another plane in like the second mission. Which caused all sorts of flailing about by me until it came into sensor range on its own.

Tried out three strategy games to hold me over until Book 5 of Dreamfall Chapters. XCOM: Enemy Within, Crusader Kings II, and Homeworld Remastered. XCOM: Enemy Within came out the winner. So addictive. Homeworld came in at a far second place. It reminded me that I'd played it before, either a demo or a pirated copy in my less upright college days. The game's controls were the big hurdle causing it to fall behind. I'd forgotten vertical movement within minnutes! And building and launching seem a hassle when you're trying to keep other ships docked, like your harvesters. I'll come back to it, but play just wasn't smooth. Crusader Kings II got third place simply for having the largest learning curve. I was looking for something I could get into quickly. The learning scenario doesn't even seem to tell you about armies, just the bare basics. And I was less clear on how long I'd have to wait for things to work. I arranged a marriage and there was nothing indicating I'd actually done the dang thing between the arrangement and the marriage actually happening. And then I plotted to kill my brother/heir, because it seemed the right thing to do, with 63% power, but there's no telling if/when that'll happen. I had an ambition to have a son, is there more I need to do for that to actually happen? I don't know. But I did raise an army and march it against another brother because I was completely at a loss as to what else I could be doing at the time. Or should be doing.

CD Projekt got the memo, it's possible to do a great ending for a story without killing people off.

The leveling ruined Witcher for me. It's when the leveling becomes part of the gameplay loop and the reward system that things start to go wrong. The next level is always around the corner, otherwise the player will lose interest. The thing is, leveling alone is not enough to make me want to play on, and it ruins so much in the constant focus on new loot and becoming 1% better every 15 minuites. Once you start getting witcher sets, you stop even caring about loot except for selling it. Or maybe that was just me.

Heard about a quest I missed in Blood and Wine, so one last trip! Geralt and Roach investigations!

Shiner White Wing It's like a resurrected Shiner Hefeweizen that some hippy idiot decided to put cilantro in for no good reason.

There's just something satisfying in the moment to moment of Skyrim like that. Fallout 4 is the same way. Story's a wash, gameplay is mediocre, leveling system is so very uninspired, there's a few good quests but they are few, and even the loot system is dull. Unless you go grinding legendaries, you'll probably have all you ever plan to equip halfway into the game. Except it also has building stuff, and building stuff is always captivating. And I could spend forever hunting down power armor suits to throw in my house.

The stuff I take for granted, wow. I'm surprised there are any riots on the news.

Wasn't there that one game with cute girls you really liked?

I finished Blood & Wine. A real masterpiece. The only thing preventing me from immediately jumping into another playthrough is the commitment required.

And how awesome we all are. My usual "ooh, I should install and play it again" is FEAR, though.

I find myself playing around with X-COM more than even Witcher 3. Trying to fight off that distraction though.

Hnnng. Reminder that John Gonzalez of New Vegas appears to be the Lead Writer.