Starwars

Not really surprised but slightly disappointed. Ah well.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is set for a summer release as well. I wonder if they'll make it but yeah... game looks like it could be interesting.

Tehcnically not surprising I suppose but I still can't believe it. RIP.

First on my list is White March part 2.

I've shamelessly begged for several games from ShadySands, come on people! Beg some you too! I'd personally recommend Dragonfall and Gunpoint especially, good games.

I agree with the above post. The story feels it's moving towards its conclusion fast when you get to Twin Elms. Other than that I quite liked the place. I don't really like "tribal forest settlements" in RPGs usually but I think they pulled off Twin Elms beautifully. That said, I wish it had some overarching theme/quest to it. Actually I wish Defiance Bay had that also. Mostly they feel like a collection of small quests, but I wish there would be one or two lengthy quests that sorta really involved the city overall and that would not be a part of the main storyline. I think that would give both the cities some more... I dunno, personality. It doesn't feel like you can really "dig into" these places the way I wish you would. I also think some of the Twin Elms quests felt a bit weird with the different factions. Like how you could slaughter the faction that sacrifices people. I mean, I appreciated the reputation system but it just felt weird that those factions were so self-contained. I think Defiance Bay fails a bit more to portray its "big city" feel. Twin Elms is large but I think that it fits that it's sorta sparse. Defiance Bay needed more bustle and crowded streets I think. More Ondra's Gift really. I think that area was really good, was the one that felt city-esque for me. Hopefully they can improve upon that in a sequel (hopefully upgrading to the new Unity version means they can go to town more with NPCs walking around and all that). And yeah, what excites me about PoE2 is that they have so much of the framework now. They don't need to tear everything down and build it up again like what many sequels do. I mean obviously some things should be improved mechanically and all that but what excites me is that hopefully they can just go crazy with content creation. I really hope that they can just create a crazy huge game like BG2. Especially if they continue in the vein of the White March areas (just, please tone down the number of combat encounters a bit) which feel dense and interesting.

Yesterday I made some fudge for the first time in my life. Let it cool overnight and chopped it up today. Over my expectations, it turned out goddamn perfect. Solid blocks yet creamy enough. I expect to fail miserably next time.

I don't really agree with that. If you had winds like that, Geralt and the people inhabiting the world would have severe trouble just walking anywhere. And... looking at the trees in Velen for example. I'm sorry, they should just not move like that unless they're in immediate danger of breaking. It may seem like a petty complaint but again, I live in a very windy climate right by the coast with nature around me and it just looks jarring as hell in the Witcher 3. My ex girlfriend had exactly the same reaction when I just briefly showed her the game (she likes good graphics). "Yeah, it looks great but... the wind is silly." EDIT: To clarify, I do agree that the closer one gets to "realistic graphics" the more things like these jump out at you.

I'm not denying that the Witcher 3 looks extremely good but I'm sorry, the wind present in that game is not depicting nature realistically. I live in a place where it's constantly windy and trees don't behave like that unless it's stormy to the point where trees will break. And that seems to be pretty much the default state of the Witcher 3.. One of my biggest disappointments with it as far as visuals go. It annoys me to no end.

Btw, there's a good sneak peek at one of the areas from WM2 on Obsidian's instagram account. I'm not sure how to save the image from there so you'll have to go there to check it out yourself. It's a ways down on that page (below the Christmas stuff). Looks gorgeous. EDIT: Oh, try this: https://www.instagram.com/p/-PotCKkFgA/?taken-by=obsidian

Probably Underrail. I also reinstalled NWN2 and I might play some mod for that. Not sure other than that. Been thinking about replaying Alpha Protocol soon.

I think the only thing we've heard is that Josh said somewhere that he'd like the idea to import your save to PoE2 which would, I guess, likely mean keeping the same character. I believe that's the most conclusive we've heard. Things could always change.

Playing this little game called 80 days that I found. Kinda nice little game, loosely based on a Verne novel. You play as a manservant to a nobleman who has taken on a bet to go around the world in 80 days. Takes place in the latter part of the 1800s, and it's injected with a steampunk touch. Gameplay is simple. You have a world-globe with a lot of destinations to go to. You learn of travel routes in the various towns, and if you want to make the 80 day limit you'll have to try and find a good route. Each route costs a bit of money and you have to manage your budget as well. You also have to manage your master's health. And then you can buy various things in cities as well to either sell for a good price in other cities, or it can help during travel (lessen the impact on your master's health during hard travel routes for example). The gameplay is pretty simple yet feels good. What makes it gel together is that it's a text-based approach, and little "events" constantly pop up during travel and when you're in cities. Some of those are sorta "choices & consequences-ish" but mostly it's sort of... the style is more akin to you helping the game write a novel as you go on. There are a lot of destinations and routes to travel through so I think it will be quite replayable. It's not amazing gameplay, nor an amazing dramatic story. It's just... quite nice to play. Relaxing. And very well written. Highly recommended.

Probably not. Josh Sawyer said on another forum that we'll probably see a bugfixing patch or so after WM2 but then they'd like to move on to new stuff.

I used to love Christmas but the crazy consumerism, even if I don't have to partake in it, have made me increasingly tired of it these last few years. This year has reached a new height, I just can't deal with it. I'll go to dinner with my parents on Christmas Eve to avoid the experience of my mother having a meltdown. I'll probably head home early and have a quiet drink. No decorations, gifts or stuff like that this year for me. Don't really consider myself particularly cynical or anything all in all but Christmas has been really getting to me for some reason. Will be nice to have some time off though.

Meh, not that Fatigue from exploration was a problem, a huge thing in the game or anything but it just feels like one of those things that makes sense. Not sure why they would want to remove that even with these changes.

I'm not normally a fan of "epic" gameplay so I'd rather have PoE2 be a new start as it were. But, if they do continue the Watcher's story I hope they can at least A) make it feel like it makes some kind of sense with how powerful characters now are and B) have some sort of tie to PoE1, ideally referencing some choices we make there.

Pillars 2 and a WoD RPG as far as I'm concerned. A Fallout game if they could do away with the whole voiced protag rubbish and go back to... ah never mind, it's not gonna happen.

Still Ori and the Blind Demon. Gotta say that the stage where you have to escape the flood lit a certain platformer spark inside me that hasn't been lit in a really long time. Took me a lot of tries to get through but it was quite awesome.

Rewatched Syriana for the... fourth or fifth time. Never ceases to amaze how good it is. One of my all-time favorites without question.

I can't believe that stuff is actually for real.

Been playing more of Ori and the Blind Forest. It's a good game, beautiful to look at and controls really well. I'm not particularly good at these kind of games though so I tend to play it in short bursts before I get too annoyed by the constant deaths. Also been playing Renowned Explorer's Society which I picked up on the STEAM sale as well. Good, charming little game. Though it kinda reminds me of Darkest Dungeon in a sense. It's a good challenging game for casual playing but not really deep enough to *really* dig into.

Picked up Ori and the Blind Forest on the STEAM sale. Looks lovely and the controls feel really smooth. Unfortunately, some of it feels a bit too fast for my taste. I think I'm really out of shape on these types of games, getting owned left and right.

What exactly happens? I've played New Vegas easily between 500 to 900 hours (due to modding, duh), and I've never had a savegame corrupted. The game just stucks on loading screen (for forever, and doing a CTRL-ALT-DEL shows a message - in the task manager or whatever it is called - that the game isn't responding). It has only happened with an EW build (just recently and the same a few years back when I last tried). I also play the game "vanilla" (mods have seemed to offer more hassle than worth in the past so I stopped trying) so there're no extra bugs coming from that route. This has happened to me as well many times on my previous computer. I managed to solve it (well, work around it) by starting a new game and once you're "inside the game" so to speak, then load the save. That always worked for me. It's a hassle though, but...

I'd heartily welcome a turnbased PoE game, that'd be awesome. But for a full on sequel, I hope they continue with the stuff they've developed for the first game (and that's coming from someone who doesn't even like realtime w pause that much). Develop what you have. One of the things that excite me about the whole PoE thing is that they can do a BG2 style sequel, where you can really build on what you already have in the first game and focus a lot more on content creation, rather than tearing everything down and rebuild it all into a "new experience" so to speak. I hope that's the plan they have for PoE2. Good interview, thanks for linking.