Triple - A Foxy Lad

Xoti grew on me. Ye she can be off-putting at first as shes needy, attention seeking, a troublemaker and generally behaves as the special star of her very own romance novel. But yknow there are people out there like that, and shes an accurate portrayal of them. I think i know a few writers and vn designers who are real life xotis. And... yeah, they can actually be a lot of fun - i wouldnt want to share a workplace with many of them but the enthusiasm and - i must admit - thirstiness can be infectious and endearing. So ye, xotis not everyones cup of tea, but i do respect how megan starks has portrayed a divisive type without sugar-coating or demonising it. That balance is a rare thing and its a good example of what i like about obs' approach. Conversely I like serafen because hes a good execution of an old trope. The dirty, swashbuckling rogue with a heart of gold. Theres real, uncomplicated humanity in his writing and voice acting, and thats not always easy to convey. I could keep going on about characters, but im at college and have to go back to class!

The companions in kingmaker are mostly fun people that ud want to drink with, bang or marry. Uve got ur dating sim protagonists, ur comic relief, ur cute sidekick, ur partypooper(s) etc. Theyre all pretty well executed and a good laugh. The dating sim options, apart from the devoted pretty boy husbando, leave me a bit cold, but i dont have to bother with them. Tho that prob says more about my emotional availability than anything else. Kingmakers drawing a lot of comparisons to NWN2 for me. If you enjoyed adventuring with Khelgar, Sand, Neeshka etc. well, kingmakers got a similar vibe. Its a fine thing. Im cool with it. But i will say that it might rub the more genre-weary the wrong way. If ure one of these people who didnt get on with NWN2s base campaign u might have less patience for it.

I dunno fam. Like, I got no problem with a world where both 'Star Wars' and 'Embassytown' exist. Horses for courses etc. but i dont think holding the latter to the standards of the former achieves much. fwiw I really enjoyed WC3. It was great fun. The best argument for blizzard's approach imo. But i dont follow obs for writing like WC3's. I dont need - or want - every character in a game to be larger than life, a wife, husband, best mate, doujinshi bait. Etc. - or a merch opportunity if im being nasty which im inclined to do regarding blizzard. I appreciate that obs would benefit financially from throwing a bit more pulp out there but... eh... call me an old idealist but thats not always the point. Also ive grown kind of attached to the lost and damaged folk that end up in the watchers orbit - that never quite become friends - kinda reminds me of the relationships ive had with many colleagues over the years.

If u havent played kingmaker yet, ur in for a treat. Think consequences of pathfinding in poe amplified by speed of combat, so less margin for wonky pathfinding. If ur mage in bg went walking the wrong way for 1 second, it werent so bad. If ur mage with fast runner in poe went running the wrong way for 1 second, goodbye mage.

Theyve brought it into line with their overall brand. For better or worse, every blizzard IP is now subordinate to the overarching 'Blizzard IP'. I guess it gives the blizzard fans an identity to latch on to, but it waters down individual franchises. They all just look and sound and read like blizzard games now. 'Hall of mirrors' i keep calling it. This is a side effect - or maybe the purpose - of this approach. It amplifies and repeats blizzards tics ad nauseum. For some folk i guess this is a comfort, but i got fed up of it a long time ago.

New clown subclass confirmed. Ur unique ability is that u can drive the little car without the doors falling off and increased range on custard pies.

Ive gone back to poe1 lately to prep another character for forbidden sanctum. Honestly, its striking how much more cluttered it feels than deadfire - or even baldurs gate or kingmaker. 'Rounds' are faster in poe than in dnd, where everyones on a 6 second loop. Base movement speed is higher. The faster pace requires u to micro more. Ur martial classes have more to do than basic attack. Even ur spellcasters are busier bcs theyre casting more spells in combat rather than prebuffing - and spellcasting time is generally shorter in poe. Like the 6 person party in poe1 is far from an unplayable dealbreaker imo, but 5 feels closer to the systems sweet spot.

Man i wish id seen only the things that ud seen.

My initial reaction to this was 'fk no, bg belongs in the past, stop poking the corpse'. i want to be able to revisit simpler times that are beloved memories. i didnt buy the enhanced editions or siege of dragonspear for that reason. idgaf that i have to play with a letterbox. Adds to the experience. That said. Lets say they take the name of the series literally: 'baldur's gate'. Instead of anything to do with bhaalspawn, they make an unrelated 5e game with the city Baldur's Gate as a central hub. Ideally no references to old game that would fk with peeps teenage headcanons - well, *my* teenage headcanon at least lol. I think i would actually be up for that.

if obs make 'celery man' the boss of forgotten sanctum, i will die laughing. one of my friends is already getting hyped at the prospect of 'archmage TAYNE'

nowhere near max level. i keep restarting to try out new ****.

shows how much i know about steam. lol. i only use that platform when its 100% necessary.

durgans battery is ok but it invites too many comparisons to durlags tower, which was far more ambitious and memorable. i respect obs paying homage to such, but i fear they salute bg at expense of how own game is perceived.

ull be thrilled to know there are many more firsts ahead of u

ye im a fan of this change. in every playthrough so far ive got distracted from what i was doing and sailed around getting my blackbeard on. ship combat may be little more than a repetitive minigame, but its strangely relaxing.

honestly, it breaks my mind that people thought the burial isle-sun in shadow sequence was too long. i presume this is why balancing teams are leaning more and more on telemetry. much easier than separating signal from noise. there are also a couple of truisms regarding feedback: 'they who know least, shout loudest' and 'peeps dont know what they *really* want. even if they did, they wouldnt tell you'. c'mon mang, call a spade a spade. its a term that mocks a persons response by comparing it to: *over-emotional* *squealing* (or 'bawwing') in response to being *spanked* or *sodomised*. So those two actions are defined as painful and demeaning - yet any response to them is declared pathetic as enduring them marks the subject as feminine or a 'sissy'. the term straight up leverages the stereotype of feminine gay men - or femininity in general - to belittle someone. as for this (depending on source) remark. fam, i was around when that term first circulated. i can tell ye, it had fk all to do with piles. im guessing there have been recent efforts by chan and meme folk to whitewash their culture. but language is a big unwieldy beast, and every word contains its past. so ye, if peeps want to remain insensitive to the term's connotations and keep using it, they can crack on, but yr gonna get some stink-eye from it, and usual pattern of things is that level of stink-eye will increase as time goes on. even if u dont give a fk about upsetting folk, is prob easier life to just drop it from lexicon.

Im really up for a big ol' school claustrophobic dungeon. I think its fair to say nothing quite replicates the vibe. Raedrics hold is great on its own terms, but it aint the same. Caed nua more like a sensible version of that 'via infinitum' from FFX-2 or whatever it was called. Generally, i dont like to think in terms of games 'missing things' - best to focus on what a game has and does imo. but ngl a durlags tower would put deadfire over the top for me. The series has knocked out some pretty great small dungeons and set pieces. Now its time for a centrepiece.

Ive no basis for this, but dyou think release of pathfinder might have helped? It might have whetted folks appetite for similar things. Also, as someone who's kinda playing both games side by side, poe is several degrees more balanced and polished. Like to the point where it was a legit shock coming from km to poe. So i can imagine someone delving into km - enjoying it but wishing it werent quite so ornery - then going 'oh whats this pillars thing, i kinda slept on it the first time.'

Game's also leapt into the bestselling list on gog. Maybe peeps waiting for that 'black friday' thing? Also word might have got around that last dlc is around the corner and games's been patched a fair bit. It's nice RPGs often have that 'long tail' thing where theyll eventually earn u money and acclaim. Must be a ballache for devs and publishers trying to make bank tho.

why should it be? fml, if everyone avoided what u call 'crap writing' every werewolf novel would open with a 70,000 word essay on why the transformation doesnt violate the second law of thermodynamics. and dont get me started on how the 'cosmic horror' tradition might regard this little rubric of urs - or *magical realism*. fml. if u discover that genre, i hope uve got some ibuprofen handy. nope, i didnt suggest that. u want to insert words in my mouth, crack on bruv, but ull excuse me if i dont participate while u argue with urself. once more, i suggested horses for courses, that the (imaginary, setting-unique) force could be understood via (imaginary, setting-unique) methods relevant to the force. no they dont. eh what. like i... *guess* u can use SW as a springboard to explore and express that theme? and no doubt someone somewhere would get their rocks off doing it. world is big after all. but it would be a hard sell for me. a very hard sell. That some religious group's dogma is *gasp* not all-encompassing and imperfect when it comes to explaining and harnessing some mysterious and otherworldly phenomenon is a hard sell? Whatever floats your boat, I guess. once more for the folks at the back. its not the theme i have an issue with, its the salience of the carrier. if u want to interrogate certain ways of understanding the world, fill ur boots. but i see little point in burdening a series like star wars with that task. eh? why on earth would u have yoda beating palpatine tho? like if palpatines to be taken seriously as an antagonist, he has to be tasty enough to hold his own against the best the good guys have to offer. usual thing is that the master has to get splatted so a student may rise. thats... expected. why would anyone feel cheated by that? sweet lord, ill have to check out for now. i stated the original point i wanted to make and id rather enjoy myself than carry on talking at cross-purposes. also i lost some stuff bcs of browser nonsense. that might have been my fault. imma bit of a tech imbecile. like, my main problem with star wars is that it wants to fulfil the tropes of a particular genre while *at the same time* creating an expansive universe that undermines that genre. ur mainly arguing star wars should fulfil its 'expansive universe' brief with no regard for its original genre because of some platonic ideal of 'good writing' which i dont believe applies to every form. if u think star wars should ditch the space-fantasy blockbuster angle and mature into something else, thats fair - personally i feel the franchise should have stayed within its remit and that it cant evolve without sacrificing too much of its original identity.

Id go falchion personally. 18-20 base crit on a standard martial weapon is pretty tasty Largely, u shouldnt be contemplating 'pure' classes in pathfinder. Mixture of rogue+fighter weighted towards whatever ure feeling should be fine. At v least u want to make sure ur packing 1 x rogue + 1 x vivisectionist. After that u can go 18 lvls of fighter or a mixture of fighter and rogue according to taste. U might want to start the game as a lv 1 fighter just for convenience. Either way u want to go STR based rather than DEX based.

I keep thinking i should give the witcher a fair go. I played a bit of the original at launch and... eh, im sure its great and all, but i had no interest in being that geralt character. aint played alpha protocol for the same reason. i was one of those kids who always wanted james bond to lose.

Mate ur confused af. D3 legit ends with 'oh no, diablos gonna come back'. Didnt u finish it? Why are u comparing it to other games if u didnt finish it. I thought that wasnt allowed.

ye, but again SW universe not real world. These ineffable forces *actually exist*. they are concrete, not nebulous. even if the ip describes the understanding of the force in mystical, rather than scientific language, that understanding is rational according to the universe in which it takes place. ur comparison with traditional medicine doesnt hold. in ur example, the Chinese were using mystical methods to understand a physical phenomenon. in SW, the jedi are using mystical methods to understand a mystical phenomenon. the former's irrational with the benefit of current knowledge. the latter ain't. It seems Disney judged all that malarkey was undermining the IP's central conflict and USP. Cant say i blame them. well, ye ofc, if one side of the conflict knew everything, thered be no meaningful opposition. thered be no darth vader cos theyd have learnt to stop darth vader from ever happening. like, what would be the point. lets watch a space opera where nothing happens. in every single story that trades in battle between good and evil, good is always imperfect bulwark against evil. the trope struggles to wok any other way. eh, i think making judgements on inevitability of anything within a fictional universe is a fool's errand. like, all a writer has to do is create a centrally organised religious establishment with no schisms and badda-bing! like, obv this raises argument of whether the story ur telling would benefit from its inclusion - but i can easily believe it would in some circumstances. like if the complexity of ur lore is drawing focus from the story u want to tell, u simplify ur lore. I'm sure MCA's take would be interesting and i greatly enjoyed his subversion of the IP - but KOTOR2 is MCA first and Star Wars a very distant second. eh what. like i... *guess* u can use SW as a springboard to explore and express that theme? and no doubt someone somewhere would get their rocks off doing it. world is big after all. but it would be a hard sell for me. a very hard sell. U could go even further back to Zoroastrianism if u want to dig into concepts of absolute good and evil. they posited the destructive spirit 'Angra Mainyu' and the creative spirit 'Ahura Mazda'. afaik theyre the origin of the god/devil or good/evil binary which has endured for centuries. im no great expert in religious matters so ive only got the simplest understanding of them im afraid. ye that all pretty uncontroversial. esp regarding Tolkien and Lewis. there judeo/christian symbolism all over the matrix. cant comment on batman v superman.

I feel biggest problem with SW is that many fans and creators alike want it to be all-encompassing space fantasy universe that can tell all stories and reflect entirety of human experience. unfortunately this results in conflict with original spec. Most attempts to resolve its ambitions with its identity have resulted in a mess. as mentioned above, MCA did well on his own terms, but his efforts were divisive. They didnt gain popular traction. the series could reject the whole force binary to become what it wishes, but then why call it Star Wars?