Starwars

Very cool, great to have much of the lore compiled in a video like this. Great work!

I feel an enormous amount of discussion has been going on about the beetles in Dyrford Crossing. Perhaps understandably so. But how do you guys feel about the rest of them? The wolves, the spiders, the shamblerthingies, the wurms, the Skaenites, the lions, the feral druis, the thingies guarding the ruin entrance in the western area, the spectres... I don't have a lot of time right now but overall I think the spiders will be pretty fun to play against once the game gets polished up more. They feel deadly and squishy. The wurms were a bit disappointing. They're obviously only babies but it still felt like they should be a bit more threatening. The spectres annihilated me the first and only time I went down there (want to save something from the beta for later).

Pretty sure the Dyrford music is the Dyrford music. It was announced as such several Kickstarter updates ago, and the theme is named after the town. Not sure why you're saying that theme will be replaced later. @Sensuki with all the hours you're putting into the beta I'm not surprised that you're growing weary of the combat music. I meant that it will be replaced during character creation with another piece of music.

In Dyrford Crossing, I'd say that the beetles are the main challenge of the area (though I can't remember the shambler thingies at the moment, only fought them once). You need to kinda watch what you're doing there. Wolves are really easy. The wurms are easy. The spiders outside are not really a problem. I don't think all the encounters in the beta are tough at all. Most of the challenges comes from inside the dungeons for me at least, which feels pretty fine. The Skaen temple kinda wears me down slowly more than having encounters that are downright dangerous. The spiders can really put a number on you in the cave. I've only tried the ruin in the western area once since I don't want to spoil everything in the beta but the spectres there whooped me real fast.

The title theme is, as far as I know, in the backer beta, though it may or may not be completely finished. It is what plays during the very first menu screen. Not during character creation (the character creation piece is currently the music that plays in Dyrford and will be replaced with something else later).

I love the little descriptions. Sometimes they feel a bit superfluous but I'd much rather have them in all in all. To me it gives the feeling of a GM describing things to me, I've always liked that. I will agree however that its use is a bit uneven in the beta with some characters having much more than others. Did the bard/chanter at the inn have any text like that?

Does anyone else find it kinda weird that the backroom at the currier's lead down to the Skaen temple... The very same temple (and game-area) which is also accessed in Dyrford Crossing that it takes 4 hours to travel to from Dyrford? I hope there aren't more weird "stretches of logic" in the game like that. It's a nitpicky thing, but it feels weird. Especially since I actually love that you can get down there via the currier's also.

I don't think combat in the beta is too hard either, though it can certainly be tricky to tell since... well, it's not finished yet. Nor do I think I would feel BG2 was much easier if I were to be dropped into that game without having had any prior experience of the game and ruleset before. PoE beta has some pretty tough encounters (certainly not the worst we will see), and some really easy ones as well. BG2 has some extremely tough encounters (subtract all that experience you have with the game and you'll get rocked a lot of times most likely) and some really easy ones also. EDIT: I should say that I've only played on Normal. And that feels about "right" to me so far.

I replayed BG a few years ago. Found it alright though some sections were so mindnumbingly boring I wanted to downright uninistall the game (the Cloakwood bits prior to gaining access to Baldur's Gate). Urgh. As far as PoE goes, I'd definitely says it feels like a spiritual successor. There's no question about that at all in my mind. The question for me is how good and fun it will be in the end.

More non-combat exploration, being able to throw a stone without hitting some enemy.

Me neither.

HMMMM.

Darkest Dungeon is looking really excellent:

I'm sure Obsidian expected a certain amount of, ahem... aggression. But as long as the posts contains something constructive then I think it's good. In particular, I think they will have a huge help in balancing the game and just getting an idea from the players how the whole thing feels. For tweaking and minor additions I think the backer feedback will be immensely useful. I'm sure there will be posts on release saying "I suggested this back in the beta and OEI SUCKS for not implementing it" but that's to be expected naturally. It is kinda amusing how emotional one can get over a game in the making though. And that's not a jab at other people, that's something I'm guilty of as well.

There is a difference between being a storyfag and liking the overall direction of the mechanics though. I don't really consider myself a storyfag aside from a few exceptions (Torment and MotB being the main ones, both which I would consider quite horrible mechanically), yet I don't consider the mechanics of the IE games anything particularly amazing. I certainly don't like everything that PoE does but I think it holds a lot more promise than the IE games in terms of gameplay. Whether it will fulfill that potential remains to be seen of course.

It completely depends on your expectations and what you consider the "bona-fide" IE experience to be exactly. Personally, it's pretty close to what I was expecting and similar enough to the "IE feel". Then again, I think the BGs are "only" good, the IWDs alright. I love Torment to death but this is very different from that I think. The writing and lore feels really solid and I'm sure it will feel even better when you're not dropped in the middle of it like in the backer beta but can play it naturally from the start. A lot of it, not everything but a lot, will depend on your relationship with the IE games and just exactly how close you want PoE to be. Personally I'm overall rather happy with the changes they have made (with some exceptions), while others will consider the changes to be an unforgivable offense (hi Helm).

I thought DS3's combat was fantastic (though nothing like the other installments of course). Similarily, I think I'll much prefer PoE's combat to the IE games once the kinks get worked out. There are still issues on the visual clarity, and I think the posts made about percentages here and percentages there are very true and certainly don't do much to ease on into the experience. It feels too cluttered. Hopefully they can make that happen. Yeah, other than that, I like this a whole lot more. I'm doing way more with my party all in all, and there are still moments where I can relax a bit more and let dudes auto-attack. The pacing feels a lot better to me after the second patch, though I'm sure it can be tuned even better.

It's not optimized yet.

I just did a runthrough (well, not completely finished) on Normal and I haven't had much trouble with the fights. The beetles in particular have been some of the easier ones for me actually. What did get me is that sometimes it appears my guys get afflicted with some kind of status thingie that drains there health/stamina, yet there appears to be not status effect on them that I can see above their portrait. Maybe I missed something? It happened mostly in the Skaen dungeon.

Actually, you did.

To be honest, listening to just voice-samples/barks from other, earlier RPGs (including some from IE) with no context (and some even WITH context), kinda makes me want to kill myself, so...

New Vegas is one of my most replayed games. I think partly that is because it is a fairly recent game that really tried going back to the whole "you have a lot of freedom, not just in terms of where you go but in terms of quests and who you want to attack/support". NV is one of those games where, every time I replay it, I'm like "hm, what should my character's motivations be this time?". It has encouraged me to create all kinds of character concepts which is really what I enjoy the most in RPGs I think. For me, a lot of the replayability in RPGs stem down to finding new content/solving things in a very different manner than on another playthrough. Finding that content that I missed on the first playthrough. From the beta, it appears that PoE will at least have different solutions to quests which is nice. But I really hope those solutions will in turn present different situations thereafter. Also, since there is a faction system in place, I'm hopeful that will really encourage the player agency.

Et tu, Obsidian? It can't be that expensive to get proper voice actors. Heck, inXile got Duke Nukem to voice General Vargas, and he has a hell of a lot more lines too. Not that I disagree with you at all but this already happened in Old World Blues where a reporter (I think it was?) for some site did some voiceacting for the light switches and I believe the stealth armor. But yeah, hoping that it's placeholder as well. I also think it kinda sounds as if the character herself might not be one to really showcase emotion a lot. But even so, the acting isn't good.

I tried replaying it a while back. I'm not as rabidly against it as some people, but I don't know... A while into the game it just gets horrendously boring to play in my opinion. The re-using of maps is a part of that, so is the "surprise!" encounters and more.

Playing Deus Ex Human Revolution: Director's Cut. It's alright so far I guess. Few new minor things added. Really miss the golden filter overall, thought it enhanced the game's style and atmosphere. Plus, those cutscenes look even more jarring now where the filter is still in fulle effect. Also having some more visual bugs here and there which I didn't have with the original. I've played the first boss-fight and that was a nice change. But overall not anything to get excited about IMO. It's a shame that the boss still behaves pretty much the same, still has access to unlimited grenades and stuff like that. Really enjoy this game overall though, it's excellent.