Bartimaeus

I watched the RLM review for it and the sound/music design seemed to be Mike's biggest complaint (and Jay's until he got used it after the first hour), and it kinda set me against watching it. Overbearing, inappropriate sound design is utterly wearisome. They compared the film to 12 Angry Men, and then joked about inexplicably setting it to some generic trash-heap Hans Zimmer score and how much it would wreck the film, then actually made a separate video showing just that a couple of days later and I was like "okay, so I guess I shouldn't watch Oppenheimer, because yeah, I get really annoyed by that crap". So obnoxious. Shut up with your gosh-awful score and just let the characters speak and scenes play naturally...and while you're at it, make sure that we can actually hear them and that you haven't mixed the audio so badly that entire lines are completely inaudible. It's not a problem unique to Nolan by any means, but he seems to be one of the worst and most high profile offenders of it.

I figured the game would be a lot smaller after being installed - usually, different languages take up a pretty good portion of the installer size. But, um, the 109 GB multi-language GOG installer instead became 125 GB after being installed. So...I guess not. Made my guardian, got through the first cutscene, tried to figure out the camera controls, saved my game and quit. No static camera makes me wanna cry. Not that I quit because of that, just can't play right now, .

Oh. Huh, well, that ended up being a lot more accurate than I thought it would be, even if it's not quite right. But...I'm just playing as Shadowheart, so I have no bloody idea what she would find trustworthy. I guess Shadowheart must like sickly goth girls? I ended up deciding that them big ol' half-elf ears needed to be just a little less...uh, prominent, so I went away from the ballerina buns. If it's supposed to be someone your PC trusts, I guess it ended up probably being for the best, since...well, I rather envisioned this original version as being some kind of crazy axe murderer, vaguely in the vein of that one psychotic android lady from Blade Runner, which doesn't really seem like the best fit now knowing that it's not exactly the worm itself. But really, I feel like if you select to play one of the NPCs, you should at least have the option of a pre-generated guardian, because there's absolutely no way I could figure out what Shadowheart's "guardian" should look like without at least having played the game a little first. They could've given you the option of picking someone that looks like whatever Shar is supposed to look like, for example. Oh well, whatever. Hey, pimples and freckles and other skin defects/textures, even if they're small/minor, are much better than unnaturally flawless skin that just makes your character look like they got completely airbrushed over! ...That's not really what you were talking about, though.

Okay, I'm going through the character creator now trying to design a guardian, whatever the hell that is. The game doesn't tell you anything about what it is, and designing a character with zero context for what they're supposed to be is incredibly difficult, so I'm going to assume it's the mental manifestation of the worm they shoved into your brain in the opening cutscene, as I have literally zero other information to go off of. So, confession time: I know I've been complaining about this game and 3D graphics in general a lot, but...this game has the opposite problem that most games have for me: there are way too many hair styles that I like. How the hell am I supposed to choose between Carrion Feathers, Highbrow Low Moralist, Sensible Extravagance, Ballerina Buns, Flaunting Bounce, or Springtime Entanglement? And there are honestly like...ten other choices that I like too, that if they were in most any other game's character creator (like the Souls games or that Harry Potter game), I would go "thank goodness, there's at least one decent option I can choose". Damn it all, hoisted by my own petard. Well, there's not a lot of face customization, so I suppose the least they could do is have a pile of good hair options - though they do look a little oddly low quality and also have this weird fuzzy effect as I move the camera around, even though I'm at maximum settings, but I figure I won't ever notice that in the actual game. Maybe. The facial hair, on the other hand, looks almost universally terrible and people should demand better than this pixely mess.

In my previous post, I actually intended to say "I seriously hope it's a fake/assumed name, or maybe even some kind of title - she's a priestess of Shar and they're a pretty silly bunch, right?", but somehow it got forgotten. Well, if that's the case, I suppose that's fine. Yeah, I'm a big proponent of starting off simple myself. No way to make me lose interest in something faster than hitting me with another lousy "end of the world"-type plot right off the bat. You can have an end of the world plot, whatever, fine, but c'mon, at least try to build to it.

Definitely better, but...yeah, still not awesome. As the premiere hater of modern 3D graphics here on the Obsidian forums, I absolutely do not care about fidelity - I would just prefer games to have cohesive, attractive, and/or unique visual styles that manage to avoid patently obvious visual bugbears and anything approaching the uncanny valley effect. I really hate looking at games that came out in the late 90s and early to mid 2000s and completely unironically thinking "these graphics bother me less than roughly 98% of what releases today". That should not happen, but something is wrong with my brain and it does...all the danged time, and character faces/hair is persistently one of the worst offenders these days. I will say for BG3, I think it was a great idea in allowing the player to hijack one of the main NPCs and just play as them. That's something I've often wanted for a number of games, including the original Baldur's Gate - being able to make Imoen the main character would've been awesome (even if it had lead to more limited/in-character dialogue options). Though I'm not really sure about this particular cast of characters - I'd probably play as either Shadowheart (...even though that's a truly advanced level of stupid name for a character) or maybe the Githyanki lady. I think both of them are evil(?), which also seems like a plus.

I did just watch somebody else's "all hairstyles" video, and it does look like they generally rendered better there. I'd personally say character graphics should probably have extremely high priority and use higher level of detail relative to the rest of the game even when using low quality settings to avoid bizarre-looking characters like that, but that's just me.

you know, I've never really understood the 'pixely ultra-sharp painted on hair that somehow manages to look like a bizarre particle effect directly attached to my character's head/face' visual style for hair in modern 3d games

maybe they should spend a little less time making 16K textures that take up a hundred plus gigabytes and more time on having animations that don't make characters look like animatronics but at least they (presumably) finished the game, unlike the majority of early access scams

the who in the what now? the what in the what now? fake edit: not the character you're talking about but i am officially frightened

Man, I am so out of the game on the latest hybrids.

I'm glad Larian is continuing to at least play into my theory of the Baldur's Gate series essentially being an elaborate mind flayer alien invasion plot in the vein of the X-Files. It's the least they could do after making the game turn-based.

Hey, the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity is NOT worthless. Just ask Edwin!

what the hell is that abomination alright, new rule: AI isn't allowed to touch anything I like or care about ever again (though is that actually even AI, or just some random fan art?)

when is AI gonna make me new hand drawn characters in 80s/90s styles

With singleplayer games, there's a happy medium to be had between balance and fun, and it can hard to get enough of both, particularly when there are so many different (hopefully actually unique) options to choose from. When you're between a rock and a hard place with a fun vs. balance issue, I tend to lean towards fun, because worst case scenario, if the player finds the "fun" option to be unsatisfying because it's too powerful or otherwise unbalanced, the player can always just choose to self-restrict and/or go a different route entirely. How many different beloved games have some kind of class, item, exploit, or whatever else that long-time/hardcore players say is the "noob" way of playing? That's perfectly fine - if it's fun on the first playthrough, then great, and if the player that found it fun on the first playthrough later decides "wait, that really is actually too powerful, I'm going to do something else" for a second playthrough, then all is right in the world. It seems so much wiser to focus your energies on trying to get what's currently bad/unfun to be better instead. And of course these kinds of games devolve into mainly focusing on the gameplay (and possibly scumming thereof): these are typically very long games and most of the player's time is taken up by the gameplay. If you want players to focus more strongly on "roleplaying" and dialogue/characters/story/world, well...you probably need to be a different kind of game that takes up much more of the player's time with them, because those things haven't historically translated all that seriously into these overly scripted/railroaded CRPG video games that force the player down just one or two paths with little to no room for arugment. Frankly, it's very difficult to truly capture the experience of a tabletop adventure campaign where almost anything can happen, where most of the fun comes from the combined imaginations of the players and their DM constructing a world, characters, and a story together all by themselves while taking it to just where they want to go with it, so it's really no wonder that "roleplaying" must necessarily take a backseat.

I don't think you're ever given the opportunity: he just appears when he's needed and then disappears afterwards. But even if you were able to, I expect he'd just go on and appear the next time he's needed anyways. BG3: Sorry, I have no idea, as I haven't played BG3 for even a second and it seems very unlikely I ever would. Turn-based tactical combat makes my soul scream out in mortal anguish. P.S. Proofread your posts: my previous one was a disaster.

"I'M HERE WITH THE BOX IN MY HAND! USE THIS BOX!" You know, BG1 had Biff the Understudy that replaced critical plot characters if you murdered them, it's not really that different. The DM trying to figure out how to make everything work and play along with the player's fickle whims can be difficult, especially given that this is a game and requires all sorts of assets to account for every possibility, whereas a real DM playing tabletop can do just about everything from the seat of their pants if necessary (...even if it results in spontaneous, potentially terrible, and/or just downright silly writing in order to keep up). Sometimes, it requires having a lady appear from thin air and shove the all important artifact that you somehow missed a hundred times up to this point straight into your hands in order to not completely break the campaign.

Here's an argument you might understand: 2D anime girl > 3D furry dog demon ...Although, gosh, I'm looking over these Yeston cards again, and some of said anime girls are more embarrassing than others. But here's my final argument: if you only present the anime-less side of the Yeston card to somebody, it can actually look pretty sweet; no such luck with the dog card. ...Though, unfortunately, if it's actually currently being used in your PC, I do believe the anime side is the one likely being presented to your friends and family, who have now abandoned you out of fear and shame.

I don't think it does, actually. Yes, the Sakura cards have the terrible anime girls, but at least they have novel color design and...well, honestly, I just think the 3D furry demon dog thing is worse than the anime girls. This is the worst graphic design I've ever seen on a PC component...so far.

The only spiders I know of that leave me unsettled are the little ones with too long legs, like daddy long legs. Black widows look delightful in comparison, but the best spiders are the fuzzy ones, like tarantulas and jumping spiders.

Yeah, as a kid, I used to have pet black widows. Well, they were less "pets" and more "an infestation local to my home", but the same idea, really. They're pretty cool.

There's really nothing quite like your brain telling you that you're dying when you're perfectly fine (or some other equally calamitous feeling or imagining). For anyone who hasn't ever experienced it, I fully recommend trying it out at least once.

I feel like her outfit would be unbearably annoying to wear - between the parts that are too tight, the parts that are too loose, and all the different random pieces of garbage dangling and bouncing every time she so much as breathes, it would be absolute sensory overload while also impeding mobility and catching on things. I guess all that that really goes for a lot of current """cute""" anime clothing design, but she in particular seems to be a masterclass in disastrous design. But I suppose where I see an incredibly tasteless concoction of uncomfortable, too much, and off-putting, other people apparently see sexy. That's the way she goes.

I don't think the actual weebs would have me even if I were so inclined: from my interactions with a number of them online, it seems to usually be that I am repulsed by them, and they by me. It's a marvellous and perfectly natural symbiosis, I think. The Night Is Short, Walk on Girl (2017). I've had this on my watchlist for a number of years. It was an odd and interesting film, but they shoved too much annoying crap in and did little things wrong because it's a modern anime and it drove me up a wall. Yes, I suppose it was a predictable result.