Monte Carlo

OK, so I don't know what I'm talking about. Congratulations on your ability to jump inside my head and divine how my hand-eye coordination works.

I think I've just had a heart attack.

I'm not blaming Arma, I'm blaming me. I just can't get into the level of stuff you've got to do at once to control your dude.

On the face of it, Arma is the ideal game for me and I should be all over it. I tried it once. I simply can't get my head around that many controls and I ended up hating it. So it's like my dream woman, but with acne. Very, very frustrating.

Another thing about this game - it's so big and varied I can just play at one aspect and lose myself for a bit and not give a toss about the critical path. or, in fact, anything else. And because there are no instructions, I feel like the only bloke in the world figuring this **** out. Which is of course nonsense but man it feels great. I honestly think that a shedload of modern twentysomething games devs should be locked in a room with this game and told "this is how you do it, bitches." Edit - developers and, especially, publishers.

Ars is pretty much my first stop for anything tech-related but games? No.

^ I've found it to be very stable, but hey software's gonna software.

^ Like I said before, KP, I see a bright future ahead of you young man.

I'm sure, somewhere out there in the BioSphere, someone's immersion is being badly broken.

http://www.pcgamer.com/au/2014/07/10/dragon-age-inquisition-e3-video-emerges-with-16-minutes-of-gameplay/#null The usual hyperbole - the most reactive RPG you'll ever play blah blah blah. No tactical top-down as far as I can see. This really is a console title, isn't it?

What are the local babes like?

It seems to me that classes aren't madly important in that all of them can do a lot of stuff like use scrolls. So atm I've got a witch and fighter with some sneaky skills. Anybody got a 'must have' opening party combo?

You've not seen me parleying with the tax-man, have you?

I really enjoyed the first game, sure it was H&S but it had the sort of eccentric charm, crafting and detail that set it apart.

Yeah, it's a shame they couldn't have made the setting just a tad bit original, it would have launched the game from 'excellent' to 'legendary.'

^ Yes, it's like an old pen and paper session with mates. Beer and pizza.

I've been on this forum for ten years, and a fair few on BIS before that and I haven't seen such a consensus around a CRPG since BG2 to be honest.

Ha ha ha I pressed 'C' and turned into a goofy-arsed boulder and started sneaking around. Seriously, I shot tea through my nose. Thank god for a great game that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Yeah, it's like Frankenstein, where the monster is made from bits of stuff dredged from the deepest recesses of Dave Gaider's Freudian subconscious.

I'm seriously considering streaming some PoE gameplay on Twitch, so the internet can enjoy the Eldritch Horror that is my London accent. I hope you'll all join in and troll me in the comments box.

Writers are odd, sure, but actors...

This isn't remotely surprising. All companies aspire to a culture, a reason why their staff get out of bed in the morning. In creative industries and vocational jobs this (which both have notoriously bad pay at most levels) this is because you love doing this stuff. I understand, I really do, why you'd want to get up in the morning and make games with certain core values and a distinct style, and which stand out from the other guy's. I even think some creative industries accept their place in the market to live up to that aspiration (i.e. you might prefer to be mid-market and keep your soul). It's Steven Berkoff, the avant garde actor who plays villains in Hollywood dreck, who calls such work 'the dirt under his fingernails' that funds his theatre stuff (that hardly anyone goes to). This duality between turning a dollar versus artistic credibility is a distinctly First World dilemma. These guys are hardly stitching footballs to buy plastic for the the roof of their favela. It is a fact of the business, nonetheless. I'd rather earn less and work at Obsidian than a King's Ransom at Bioware, but maybe that's just me.

Actually Grom, while I heartily agree with your earlier post, I'm not sure about your second. Creative types can be competitive, ferociously so, but just as many aren't. Many writers, who work alone, in fact eschew competition as they know someone is as likely to buy their book as much as the other guy's and there's more benefit in making professional allies as opposed to rivals. Literary feuds tend to be confined to... literary novelists and academics. And as the old saying goes, their disputes are so bitter because there's so little at stake. As for Obsidian, I think you've nailed it. The Codexian perspective is the bad devil that appears on their shoulder occasionally and represents a significant part of the collective Obsidian id. Nothing wrong with that, especially if you are an elitist, potty-mouthed uber-geek. As for pen1s-envy with Bioware --- I don't buy it. The Venn diagram of people who buy both of their products religiously is probably quite deep in the middle. Creatives, with legendarily dodgy job security, seldom burn bridges. And, as I say, although I'm sure workplace politics have commonality whatever the industry, I've worked in government, the private sector and as a 'creative' and the b1tching / back-stabbing dynamic is different across them all.

Man I've been bitten by the Grim Dawn bug too. I'm going to restart and make a mage-type character with that talking to pets ability.

Lone Survivor with Mark Wahlberg. I thought it was great.